1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,000
So I am a surgeon who studies creativity,

2
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,000
and I have never had a patient tell me

3
00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:09,000
that "I really want you to be creative during surgery,"

4
00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:12,000
and so I guess there's a little bit of irony to it.

5
00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:15,000
I will say though that, after having done surgery a lot,

6
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:17,000
it's somewhat similar to playing a musical instrument.

7
00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:20,000
And for me, this sort of deep and enduring fascination with sound

8
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:22,000
is what led me to both be a surgeon

9
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:24,000
and also to study the science of sound, particularly music.

10
00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:26,000
And so I'm going to try to talk to you over the next few minutes

11
00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:28,000
about my career

12
00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:30,000
in terms of how I'm able to actually try to study music

13
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:32,000
and really try to grapple with all these questions

14
00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:35,000
of how the brain is able to be creative.

15
00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:37,000
I've done most of this work at Johns Hopkins University,

16
00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:39,000
but also at the National Institute of Health where I was previously.

17
00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:41,000
I'm going to go over some science experiments

18
00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:43,000
and try to cover three musical experiments.

19
00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:45,000
I'm going to start off by playing a video for you.

20
00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:48,000
And this video is a video of Keith Jarrett, who's a well-known jazz improviser

21
00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:51,000
and probably the most well-known, iconic example

22
00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:53,000
of someone who takes improvisation to a really higher level.

23
00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:55,000
And he'll improvise entire concerts

24
00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:57,000
off the top of his head,

25
00:00:57,000 --> 00:00:59,000
and he'll never play it exactly the same way again,

26
00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,000
and so, as a form of intense creativity,

27
00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:03,000
I think this is a great example.

28
00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:05,000
And so why don't we go and click the video.

29
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:10,000
(Music)

30
00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:05,000
It's really a remarkable, awesome thing that happens there.

31
00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:07,000
I've always -- just as a listener, as just a fan --

32
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:09,000
I listen to that, and I'm just astounded.

33
00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:11,000
I think -- how can this possibly be?

34
00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:13,000
How can the brain generate that much information,

35
00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:15,000
that much music, spontaneously?

36
00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:18,000
And so I set out with this concept, scientifically,

37
00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:21,000
that artistic creativity, it's magical, but it's not magic,

38
00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:23,000
meaning that it's a product of the brain.

39
00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:26,000
There's not too many brain-dead people creating art.

40
00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:28,000
And so with this notion that artistic creativity

41
00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:30,000
is in fact a neurologic product,

42
00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:33,000
I took this thesis that we could study it

43
00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:36,000
just like we study any other complex neurologic process.

44
00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:38,000
And I think there's some sub-questions there that I put there.

45
00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:40,000
Is it truly possible to study creativity scientifically?

46
00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:42,000
And I think that's a good question.

47
00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:45,000
And I'll tell you that most scientific studies of music,

48
00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:47,000
they're very dense,

49
00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:50,000
and when you actually go through them, it's very hard to recognize the music in it.

50
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:52,000
In fact, they seem to be very unmusical entirely

51
00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:54,000
and to miss the whole point of the music.

52
00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:56,000
And so it brings the second question:

53
00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:58,000
Why should scientists study creativity?

54
00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:00,000
Maybe we're not the right people to do it.

55
00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:02,000
Well it may be,

56
00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:04,000
but I will say that, from a scientific perspective --

57
00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:06,000
we talked a lot about innovation today --

58
00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:08,000
the science of innovation,

59
00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:10,000
how much we understand about how the brain is able to innovate

60
00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:12,000
is in its infancy,

61
00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:15,000
and truly, we know very little about how we are able to be creative.

62
00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:17,000
And so I think that we're going to see

63
00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:19,000
over the next 10, 20, 30 years

64
00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:22,000
a real science of creativity that's burgeoning and is going to flourish.

65
00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:24,000
Because we now have new methods that can enable us

66
00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:26,000
to take this process of something like this,

67
00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:28,000
complex jazz improvisation, and study it rigorously.

68
00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:30,000
And so it gets down to the brain.

69
00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:32,000
And so all of us have this remarkable brain,

70
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:35,000
which is poorly understood to say the least.

71
00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:37,000
I think that neuroscientists

72
00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:39,000
have many more questions than answers,

73
00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:41,000
and I myself, I'm not going to give you many answers today,

74
00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:43,000
just ask a lot of questions.

75
00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:45,000
And fundamentally that's what I do in my lab.

76
00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:47,000
I ask questions about what is this brain doing to enable us to do this.

77
00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:50,000
This is the main method that I use. This is called functional MRI.

78
00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:53,000
If you've been in an MRI scanner, it's very much the same,

79
00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:55,000
but this one is outfitted in a special way

80
00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:57,000
to not just take pictures of your brain,

81
00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:00,000
but to also take pictures of active areas of the brain.

82
00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:02,000
Now the way that's done is by the following.

83
00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:04,000
There's something called BOLD imaging,

84
00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:06,000
which is Blood Oxygen Level Dependent imaging.

85
00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:08,000
Now when you're in an fMRI scanner,

86
00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:10,000
you're in a big magnet

87
00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:12,000
that's aligning your molecules in certain areas.

88
00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:15,000
When an area of the brain is active, meaning a neural area is active,

89
00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:18,000
it gets blood flow shunted to that area.

90
00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:20,000
That blood flow causes an increase

91
00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:22,000
in local blood to that area

92
00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:25,000
with a deoxyhemoglobin change in concentration.

93
00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:27,000
Deoxyhemoglobin can be detected by MRI,

94
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:29,000
whereas oxyhemoglobin can't.

95
00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:31,000
So through this method of inference --

96
00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:33,000
and we're measuring blood flow, not neural activity --

97
00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:35,000
we say that an area of the brain that's getting more blood

98
00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:37,000
was active during a particular task,

99
00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:39,000
and that's the crux of how fMRI works.

100
00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:41,000
And it's been used since the '90s

101
00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:44,000
to study really complex processes.

102
00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:46,000
Now I'm going to review a study that I did,

103
00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:48,000
which was jazz in an fMRI scanner.

104
00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:50,000
And this was done with a colleague of mine, Alan Braun, at the NIH.

105
00:04:50,000 --> 00:04:53,000
This is a short video of how we did this project.

106
00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:55,000
(Video) Charles Limb: This is a plastic MIDI piano keyboard

107
00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:57,000
that we use for the jazz experiments.

108
00:04:57,000 --> 00:04:59,000
And it's a 35-key keyboard

109
00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:01,000
that is designed to fit both inside the scanner,

110
00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:03,000
be magnetically safe,

111
00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:05,000
have minimal interference

112
00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:07,000
that would contribute to any artifact

113
00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:10,000
and have this cushion so that it can rest on the players' legs

114
00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:13,000
while they're lying down in the scanner, playing on their back.

115
00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:16,000
And it works like this -- this doesn't actually produce any sound.

116
00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:18,000
It sends out what's called a MIDI signal --

117
00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:20,000
or a Musical Instrument Digital Interface --

118
00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:23,000
through these wires into the box and then the computer,

119
00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:26,000
which then trigger high-quality piano samples like this.

120
00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:29,000
(Music)

121
00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:52,000
(Music)

122
00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:56,000
CL: Okay, so it works.

123
00:05:56,000 --> 00:05:58,000
And so through this piano keyboard,

124
00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:00,000
we now have the means to take a musical process and study it.

125
00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:03,000
So what do you do now that you have this cool piano keyboard?

126
00:06:03,000 --> 00:06:05,000
You can't just sort of -- "It's great we've got this keyboard."

127
00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:07,000
We actually have to come up with a scientific experiment.

128
00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:10,000
And so the experiment really rests on the following:

129
00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:14,000
What happens in the brain during something that's memorized and over-learned,

130
00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:16,000
and what happens in the brain during something

131
00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:18,000
that is spontaneously generated, or improvised,

132
00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:20,000
in a way that's matched motorically

133
00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:23,000
and in terms of lower-level sensory motor features?

134
00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:26,000
And so, I have here what we call the "paradigms."

135
00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:29,000
There's a scale paradigm, which is just playing a scale up and down, memorized.

136
00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:31,000
And then there's improvising on a scale --

137
00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:33,000
quarter notes, metronome, right hand --

138
00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:35,000
scientifically very safe,

139
00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:37,000
but musically really boring.

140
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:39,000
And then there's the bottom one, which is called the jazz paradigm.

141
00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:41,000
And so what we did was we brought professional jazz players to the NIH,

142
00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:44,000
and we had them memorize this piece of music on the left, the lower-left --

143
00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:46,000
which is what you heard me playing --

144
00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:49,000
and then we had them improvise to the same exact chord changes.

145
00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:51,000
And if you can hit that lower-right sound icon,

146
00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:53,000
that's an example of what was recorded in the scanner.

147
00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:58,000
(Music)

148
00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:23,000
So in the end, it's not the most natural environment,

149
00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:25,000
but they're able to play real music.

150
00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:27,000
And I've listened to that solo 200 times,

151
00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:29,000
and I still like it.

152
00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:31,000
And the musicians, they were comfortable in the end.

153
00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:33,000
And so we first measured the number of notes.

154
00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:35,000
Were they in fact just playing a lot more notes when they were improvising?

155
00:07:35,000 --> 00:07:37,000
That was not what was going on.

156
00:07:37,000 --> 00:07:39,000
And then we looked at the brain activity.

157
00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:41,000
I'm going to try to condense this for you.

158
00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:44,000
These are contrast maps that are showing subtractions

159
00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:46,000
between what changes when you're improvising

160
00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:48,000
versus when you're doing something memorized.

161
00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:50,000
In red is an area that active in the prefrontal cortex,

162
00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:52,000
the frontal lobe of the brain,

163
00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:54,000
and in blue is this area that was deactivated.

164
00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:56,000
And so we had this focal area called the medial prefrontal cortex

165
00:07:56,000 --> 00:07:58,000
that went way up in activity.

166
00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:01,000
We had this broad patch of area called the lateral prefrontal cortex

167
00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:04,000
that went way down in activity, and I'll summarize that for you here.

168
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:06,000
Now these are multifunctional areas of the brain.

169
00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:09,000
As I like to say, these are not the "jazz areas" of the brain.

170
00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:11,000
They do a whole host of things

171
00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:13,000
that have to do with self-reflection,

172
00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:15,000
introspection, working memory and so forth.

173
00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:18,000
Really, consciousness is seated in the frontal lobe.

174
00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:20,000
But we have this combination

175
00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:23,000
of an area that's thought to be involved in self-monitoring, turning off,

176
00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:25,000
and this area that's thought to be autobiographical,

177
00:08:25,000 --> 00:08:27,000
or self-expressive, turning on.

178
00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:29,000
And we think, at least in this preliminary --

179
00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:31,000
it's one study; it's probably wrong,

180
00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:33,000
but it's one study --

181
00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:36,000
we think that at least a reasonable hypothesis

182
00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:38,000
is that, to be creative,

183
00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:40,000
you have to have this weird dissociation in your frontal lobe.

184
00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:42,000
One area turns on, and a big area shuts off,

185
00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:45,000
so that you're not inhibited, so that you're willing to make mistakes,

186
00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:47,000
so that you're not constantly shutting down

187
00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:50,000
all of these new generative impulses.

188
00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:53,000
Now a lot of people know that music is not always a solo activity --

189
00:08:53,000 --> 00:08:55,000
sometimes it's done communicatively.

190
00:08:55,000 --> 00:08:57,000
And so the next question was:

191
00:08:57,000 --> 00:08:59,000
What happens when musicians are trading back and forth,

192
00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:01,000
something called "trading fours,"

193
00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:03,000
which is something they do normally in a jazz experiment?

194
00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:05,000
So this is a twelve-bar blues.

195
00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:07,000
And I've broken it down into four-bar groups here,

196
00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:09,000
so you would know how you would trade.

197
00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:11,000
Now what we did was we brought a musician into the scanner -- same way --

198
00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:13,000
had them memorize this melody

199
00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:15,000
and then had another musician out in the control room

200
00:09:15,000 --> 00:09:18,000
trading back and forth interactively.

201
00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:20,000
So this is a musician, Mike Pope,

202
00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:23,000
one of the world's best bassists and a fantastic piano player.

203
00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:30,000
So he's now playing the piece

204
00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:32,000
that we just saw

205
00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:34,000
just a little better than I wrote it.

206
00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:36,000
(Video) CL: Mike, come on in. Mike Pope: May the force be with you.

207
00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:38,000
Nurse: Nothing's in your pockets, right Mike?

208
00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:41,000
MP: Nope. Nothing's in my pockets. Nurse: Okay.

209
00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:52,000
CL: You have to have the right attitude to agree to it.

210
00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:54,000
(Laughter)

211
00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:56,000
It's kind of fun actually.

212
00:09:56,000 --> 00:09:59,000
And so now we're playing back and forth.

213
00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:02,000
He's in there. You can see his legs up there.

214
00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:06,000
And then I'm in the control room here, playing back and forth.

215
00:10:06,000 --> 00:10:09,000
(Music)

216
00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:21,000
(Video) Mike Pope: This is a pretty good representation

217
00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:23,000
of what it's like.

218
00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:25,000
And it's good that it's not too quick.

219
00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:27,000
The fact that we do it over and over again

220
00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:30,000
lets you acclimate to your surroundings.

221
00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:34,000
So the hardest thing for me was the kinesthetic thing,

222
00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:36,000
of looking at my hands

223
00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:38,000
through two mirrors,

224
00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:40,000
laying on my back

225
00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:42,000
and not able to move at all except for my hand.

226
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:44,000
That was challenging.

227
00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:46,000
But again,

228
00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:49,000
there were moments, for sure,

229
00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:51,000
there were moments

230
00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:55,000
of real, honest-to-God musical interplay, for sure.

231
00:10:55,000 --> 00:10:57,000
CL: At this point, I'll take a few moments.

232
00:10:57,000 --> 00:10:59,000
And so what you're seeing here --

233
00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:01,000
and I'm doing a cardinal sin in science,

234
00:11:01,000 --> 00:11:03,000
which is to show you preliminary data.

235
00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:05,000
This is one subject's data.

236
00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:07,000
This is, in fact, Mike Pope's data.

237
00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:09,000
So what am I showing you here?

238
00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:12,000
When he was trading fours with me, improvising versus memorized,

239
00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:15,000
his language areas lit up, his Broca's area,

240
00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:17,000
which is inferior frontal gyrus on the left.

241
00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:19,000
He actually had it also homologous on the right.

242
00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:22,000
This is an area thought to be involved in expressive communication.

243
00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:24,000
This whole notion that music is a language --

244
00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:27,000
well maybe there's a neurologic basis to it in fact after all,

245
00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:30,000
and we can see it when two musicians are having a musical conversation.

246
00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:32,000
And so we've done this actually on eight subjects now,

247
00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:34,000
and we're just getting all the data together,

248
00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:36,000
so hopefully we'll have something to say about it meaningfully.

249
00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:39,000
Now when I think about improvisation and the language, well what's next?

250
00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:41,000
Rap, of course, rap --

251
00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:43,000
free-style.

252
00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:45,000
And so I've always been fascinated by free-style.

253
00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:47,000
And let's go ahead and play this video here.

254
00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:49,000
(Video) Mos Def: ♫ ... brown skin I be, standing five-ten I be ♫

255
00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:52,000
♫ Rockin' it when I be, in your vicinity ♫

256
00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:54,000
♫ Whole-style synergy, recognize symmetry ♫

257
00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:57,000
♫ Go and try to injure me, broke 'em down chemically ♫

258
00:11:57,000 --> 00:11:59,000
♫ Ain't the number 10 MC, talk about how been I be ♫

259
00:11:59,000 --> 00:12:02,000
♫ Styled it like Kennedy, late like a 10 to three ♫

260
00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:05,000
♫ When I say when I be, girls say bend that key cut ♫

261
00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:07,000
CL: And so there's a lot of analogy

262
00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:09,000
between what takes place in free-style rap and jazz.

263
00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:11,000
There are, in fact, a lot of correlations between the two forms of music

264
00:12:11,000 --> 00:12:13,000
I think in different time periods.

265
00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:15,000
In a lot a ways, rap serves the same social function

266
00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:17,000
that jazz used to serve.

267
00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:19,000
So how do you study rap scientifically?

268
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:21,000
And my colleagues kind of think I'm crazy,

269
00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:23,000
but I think it's very viable.

270
00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:25,000
And so this is what you do: you have a free-style artist

271
00:12:25,000 --> 00:12:27,000
come in and memorize a rap that you write for them,

272
00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:29,000
that they've never heard before,

273
00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:31,000
and then you have them free-style.

274
00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:33,000
So I told my lab members that I would rap for TED,

275
00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:35,000
and they said, "No, you won't."

276
00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:37,000
And then I thought --

277
00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:43,000
(Applause)

278
00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:45,000
But here's the thing.

279
00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:48,000
With this big screen, you can all rap with me. Okay?

280
00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:50,000
So what we had them do

281
00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:52,000
was memorize this lower-left sound icon, please.

282
00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:55,000
This is the control condition. This is what they memorized.

283
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,000
Computer: ♫ Memory, thump. ♫

284
00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:00,000
CL: ♫ Thump of the beat in a known repeat ♫

285
00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:03,000
♫ Rhythm and rhyme, they make me complete ♫

286
00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:05,000
♫ The climb is sublime when I'm on the mic ♫

287
00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:08,000
♫ Spittin' rhymes that hit you like a lightning strike ♫

288
00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:10,000
♫ I search for the truth in this eternal quest ♫

289
00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:13,000
♫ My passion's not fashion, you can see how I'm dressed ♫

290
00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:16,000
♫ Psychopathic words in my head appear ♫

291
00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:19,000
♫ Whisper these lyrics only I can hear ♫

292
00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:21,000
♫ The art of discovering and that which is hovering ♫

293
00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:24,000
♫ Inside the mind of those unconfined ♫

294
00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:27,000
♫ All of these words keep pouring out like rain ♫

295
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:30,000
♫ I need a mad scientist to check my brain ♫

296
00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:39,000
(Applause)

297
00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:42,000
I guarantee you that will never happen again.

298
00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:44,000
(Laughter)

299
00:13:44,000 --> 00:13:46,000
So now, what's great about these free-stylers,

300
00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:48,000
they will get cued different words.

301
00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:50,000
They don't know what's coming, but they'll hear something off the cuff.

302
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:52,000
Go ahead and hit that right sound icon.

303
00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:55,000
They are going to be cued these three square words: "like," "not" and "head."

304
00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:57,000
He doesn't know what's coming.

305
00:13:57,000 --> 00:13:59,000
Free-styler: ♫ I'm like some kind of [unclear] ♫

306
00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:02,000
♫ [unclear] extraterrestrial, celestial scene ♫

307
00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:05,000
♫ Back in the days, I used to sit in pyramids and meditate ♫

308
00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:08,000
♫ With two microphones hovering over my head ♫

309
00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:11,000
♫ See if I could still listen, spittin' off the sound ♫

310
00:14:11,000 --> 00:14:13,000
♫ See what you grinning ♫

311
00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:15,000
♫ I teach the children in the back of the classroom ♫

312
00:14:15,000 --> 00:14:18,000
♫ About the message of apocalyptical ♫

313
00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:21,000
♫ Not really though, 'cause I've got to keep it simple ♫

314
00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:23,000
♫ [unclear] instrumental ♫

315
00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:26,000
♫ Detrimental playing Super Mario ♫

316
00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:30,000
♫ [unclear] boxes [unclear] hip hop ♫

317
00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:32,000
CL: So again, it's an incredible thing that's taking place.

318
00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:34,000
It's doing something that, neurologically, is remarkable.

319
00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:36,000
Whether or not you like the music is irrelevant.

320
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:38,000
Creatively speaking, it's just a phenomenal thing.

321
00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:41,000
This is a short video of how we actually do this in a scanner.

322
00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:44,000
(Laughter)

323
00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:46,000
(Video) CL: We're here with Emmanuel.

324
00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:48,000
CL: That was recorded in the scanner, by the way.

325
00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:50,000
(Video) CL: That's Emmanuel in the scanner.

326
00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:54,000
He's just memorized a rhyme for us.

327
00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:00,000
Emmanuel: ♫ Top of the beat with no repeat ♫

328
00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:03,000
♫ Rhythm and rhyme make me complete ♫

329
00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:06,000
♫ Climb is sublime when I'm on the mic ♫

330
00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:08,000
♫ Spittin' rhymes that'll hit you like a lightning strike ♫

331
00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:11,000
♫ I search for the truth in this eternal quest ♫

332
00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:14,000
♫ I'm passing on fashion; you can see how I'm dressed ♫

333
00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:17,000
CL: Okay. So I'm going to stop that there. So what do we see in his brain?

334
00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:19,000
Well, this is actually four rappers' brains.

335
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:21,000
And what we see, we do see language areas lighting up,

336
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:23,000
but then -- eyes closed --

337
00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:26,000
when you are free-styling versus memorizing,

338
00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:28,000
you've got major visual areas lighting up.

339
00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:31,000
You've got major cerebellar activity, which is involved in motor coordination.

340
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:34,000
You have heightened brain activity when you're doing a comparable task,

341
00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:37,000
when that one task is creative and the other task is memorized.

342
00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:40,000
It's very preliminary, but I think it's kind of cool.

343
00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:43,000
So just to conclude, we've got a lot of questions to ask,

344
00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:46,000
and like I said, we'll ask questions here, not answer them.

345
00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:49,000
But we want to get at the root of what is creative genius, neurologically,

346
00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:52,000
and I think, with these methods, we're getting close to being there.

347
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:54,000
And I think hopefully in the next 10, 20 years

348
00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:56,000
you'll actually see real, meaningful studies

349
00:15:56,000 --> 00:16:00,000
that say science has to catch up to art,

350
00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:02,000
and maybe we're starting now to get there.

351
00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,000
And so I want to thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

352
00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:09,000
(Applause)