Rap Artists' Brain Scans Show Creative Flow

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Researchers at the National Institute of Health have conducted an experiment that tracked the brain activity in rappers while they are gave freestyle performances as opposed to rehearsed performances.  To do so, these researchers selected 12 volunteer rap artists and used functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) to scan their brains while they were freestyled. These images track the flow of blood through the brain which indicate which areas are active during certain times. Neuroscientists hope that this might give them some insight into understanding the process of creativity.

The resulting brain images showed that the medial prefrontal cortex (middle of the frontal lobe) which corresponds to initiation and self-motivation, along with the emotional and motor regions of the brain were all much more active during freestyle rap as opposed to rehearsed rap. They generally found that the left side of the brain was more active during the beginning of creative flow; however, when the rap artists began nearing the end of a phrase or musical measure, researchers found that the right side of the brain become more active.

Fig. 1 Activity Related to Improvisation
Image from Scientific Reports

Activations Associated with Innovative Performance
Image from Scientific Reports

Lead researcher Siyuan Liu noted, "We think this freestyle improvisation could be linked to a big network, linking self motivation, initiation, language, motor and emotion together." In regards to the change of activity from the left to the right hemisphere of the brain, Liu speculates that, "Why this is changing we have no clear answer, but we think that it has something to do with how much their attention is changed at the end of the performance."By trying to link together correlational signals from the brain to the action of the rap artists, researchers hope that this experiment will help guide the way in hopes of discovering the mysteries of the creative flow through the brain.

I chose this article because I found it very interesting that rap artists were the selected test subjects for this experiment. I think that rap artists get a bad reputation due to the content of their songs and the crude messages that some rappers often portray to their listeners. However, it actually does make a lot of sense for neuroscientists to conduct this experiment on freestyle rappers because, despite the content of what their raps are about, these artists really are lyrical geniuses. I know personally, it would be impossible for me to freestyle because there is no way I'd be able to think on my feet that quickly. Think about it - they give no prior thought as to the subject they'll be rapping about, yet they somehow make everything they say make sense, make it all rhyme, and do it without any awkward pauses for thought. That is really hard! These artists clearly have a creative flow unlike many of us, and I thought it was neat that the scientific world recognized how special the talent of a rap artist is enough to want to conduct an experiment on their brains in hopes to further the knowledge of the creative channels within humans.


Article: Freestyle fMRI
Written by: Beth Marie Mole
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33363/title/Freestyle-fMRI/