Unit 2 Blog Post

In chapter 4 of Levitin’s “This is Your Brain on Music”, I found myself wondering why artists, more specifically musicians create or have the ability to make their work unpredictable. What part of the brain drives these individuals to design a song that goes against the expectations of the listener’s brain? When I posed this question in class, Juliana had suggested I research the work of Nancy Andreasen, a prolific neuroscientist who has been generating research about how the creative mind works.

To date there has been very limited research done regarding creativity, and the methods that have been used have not been properly quantified. One of the few methods that did shed some light on the abilities, and habits of those deemed creative is the “case study method.” Andreasen describes it as simply interviewing creative types, and asking them about their daily activities, and what inspires them. Similar studies have asked the question of whether high IQ correlated with a high degree of creativity. The results of such studies indicate that highly creative individuals do not require a high IQ.

This work indicates that the creative process depends heavily on intuition and flashes of insight rather than analytic processes (Andreasen)

This struck me, as most of the second part of this class has dealt with the consolidation of memory in terms of voluntary, vs. involuntary remembrance. The overwhelming emotional and sensory overflow that Swann felt during the mysterious sonata he enjoyed in Proust’s “Swann Way” was powerful enough to make him remember the feeling of listening, but he did not have the ability to remember the melody. How is it possible to have such a beautiful feeling, and yet not recall what you actually heard? Combining what I have learned in this class, with the work of Dr. Andreasen, maybe the ability to remember such moments is far stronger in individuals with artistic or musical talent. Is it possible that the brain processes associated with memory are far stronger in creative types, which gives them the ability to defy expectation and create something that attaches to our emotions? This question cannot be answered definitively; however it is a great start for future research into the minds of creative people.

Millions of keys of tenderness, of passion, of courage, of serenity, which compose it, each one differing from all the rest as one universe differs from another, have been discovered by a few great artists who do us the service, when they awaken in us the emotion corresponding to the theme they have discovered, of showing us what richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to us, in that vast, unfathomed and forbidding night of our soul which we take to be an impenetrable void.” (Marcel Proust, Swann's Way)