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So I am a surgeon who studies creativity,

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and I have never had a patient tell me,

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"I really want you
to be creative during surgery,"

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and so I guess
there's a little bit of irony to it.

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I will say though that,
after having done surgery a lot,

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it's similar to playing
a musical instrument.

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And for me, this deep
and enduring fascination with sound

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is what led me to both be a surgeon

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and to study the science
of sound, particularly music.

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I'm going to talk
over the next few minutes

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about my career

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in terms of how I'm able to study music

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and try to grapple
with all these questions

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of how the brain is able to be creative.

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I've done most of this work
at Johns Hopkins University,

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and at the National Institute
of Health where I was previously.

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I'll go over some science experiments
and cover three musical experiments.

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I will start off by playing
a video for you.

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This video is of Keith Jarrett,
who's a well-known jazz improviser

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and probably the most
well-known, iconic example

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of someone who takes improvisation
to a higher level.

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And he'll improvise entire concerts
off the top of his head,

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and he'll never play it
exactly the same way again,

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so as a form of intense creativity,

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I think this is a great example.

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And so why don't we go
and click the video.

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(Music)

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(End of music)

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It's really a remarkable
thing that happens there.

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I've always as a listener, as a fan,

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I listen to that, and I'm astounded.

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I think -- how can this possibly be?

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How can the brain generate
that much information,

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that much music, spontaneously?

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And so I set out
with this concept, scientifically,

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that artistic creativity,
it's magical, but it's not magic,

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meaning that it's a product of the brain.

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There's not too many brain-dead
people creating art.

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With this notion that artistic creativity
is in fact a neurologic product,

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I took this thesis that we could study it

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just like we study any other
complex neurologic process,

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and there are subquestions
that I put there.

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Is it possible to study
creativity scientifically?

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And I think that's a good question.

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And I'll tell you that most
scientific studies of music,

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they're very dense,

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and when you go through them,

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it's very hard to recognize
the music in it.

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In fact, they seem to be
unmusical entirely

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and to miss the point of the music.

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This brings the second question:

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Why should scientists study creativity?

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Maybe we're not the right people to do it.

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(Laughter)

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Well it may be, but I will say that,
from a scientific perspective,

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we talked a lot about innovation today,

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the science of innovation,

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how much we understand
about how the brain is able to innovate

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is in its infancy,

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and truly, we know very little
about how we are able to be creative.

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I think that we're going to see,

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over the next 10, 20, 30 years,

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a real science of creativity
that's burgeoning

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and is going to flourish,

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Because we now have new methods
that can enable us

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to take this process
like complex jazz improvisation,

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and study it rigorously.

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So it gets down to the brain.

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All of us have this remarkable brain,

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which is poorly understood,
to say the least.

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I think that neuroscientists
have more questions than answers,

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and I'm not going
to give you answers today,

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just ask a lot of questions.

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And that's what I do in my lab.

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I ask questions about what is the brain
doing to enable us to do this.

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This is the main method that I use.
This is functional MRI.

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If you've been in an MRI scanner,
it's very much the same,

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but this one is outfitted in a special way
to not just take pictures of your brain,

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but to also take pictures
of active areas of the brain.

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The way that's done is by the following:

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There's something called BOLD imaging,

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which is Blood Oxygen
Level Dependent imaging.

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When you're in an fMRI scanner,
you're in a big magnet

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that's aligning your molecules
in certain areas.

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When an area of the brain is active,
meaning a neural area is active,

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it gets blood flow shunted to that area.

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That blood flow causes an increase
in local blood to that area

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with a deoxyhemoglobin
change in concentration.

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Deoxyhemoglobin can be detected by MRI,

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whereas oxyhemoglobin can't.

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So through this method of inference --

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and we're measuring blood flow,
not neural activity --

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we say that an area of the brain
that's getting more blood

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was active during a particular task,
and that's the crux of how fMRI works.

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And it's been used since the '90s
to study really complex processes.

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I'm going to review a study that I did,
which was jazz in an fMRI scanner.

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It was done with a colleague,
Alan Braun, at the NIH.

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This is a short video
of how we did this project.

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(Video) Charles Limb: This is a plastic
MIDI piano keyboard

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that we use for the jazz experiments.

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And it's a 35-key keyboard

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designed to fit both inside the scanner,

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be magnetically safe,

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have minimal interference
that would contribute to any artifact,

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and have this cushion
so that it can rest on the players' legs

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while they're lying down in the scanner,
playing on their back.

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It works like this --
this doesn't actually produce any sound.

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It sends out what's called
a MIDI signal --

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or a Musical Instrument
Digital Interface --

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through these wires into the box
and then the computer,

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which then trigger
high-quality piano samples like this.

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(Music)

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(Music)

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(Music ends)

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OK, so it works.

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And so through this piano keyboard,

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we have the means to take
a musical process and study it.

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So what do you do now that you have
this cool piano keyboard?

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You can't just say,
"It's great we have a keyboard."

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We have to come up
with a scientific experiment.

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The experiment
really rests on the following:

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What happens in the brain during something
that's memorized and over-learned,

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and what happens in the brain
during something

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that is spontaneously
generated, or improvised,

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in a way that's matched motorically

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and in terms of lower-level
sensory motor features?

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I have here what we call the paradigms.

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There's a scale paradigm, which is playing
a scale up and down, memorized,

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then there's improvising on a scale,

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quarter notes, metronome, right hand --

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scientifically very safe,

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but musically really boring.

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Then there's the bottom one,
which is called the jazz paradigm.

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So we brought professional
jazz players to the NIH,

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and we had them memorize
this piece of music on the lower-left,

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which is what you heard me playing --

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and we had them improvise
to the same chord changes.

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And if you can hit
that lower-right sound icon,

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that's an example
of what was recorded in the scanner.

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(Music)

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(Music ends)

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In the end, it's not the most
natural environment,

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but they're able to play real music.

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And I've listened to that solo 200 times,

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and I still like it.

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And the musicians
were comfortable in the end.

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We first measured the number of notes.

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Were they playing more notes
when they were improvising?

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That was not what was going on.

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And then we looked at the brain activity.

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I will try to condense this for you.

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These are contrast maps that are showing
subtractions between what changes

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when you're improvising
vs. when you're doing something memorized.

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In red is an area that's active
in the prefrontal cortex,

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the frontal lobe of the brain,

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and in blue is this area
that was deactivated.

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So we had this focal area
called the medial prefrontal cortex

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that went way up in activity.

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We had this broad patch of area
called the lateral prefrontal cortex

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that went way down in activity,

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I'll summarize that for you.

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These are multifunctional
areas of the brain,

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these are not the jazz areas of the brain.

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They do a whole host of things

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that have to do with self-reflection,

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introspection, working memory etc.

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Really, consciousness is seated
in the frontal lobe.

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But we have this combination

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of an area that's thought to be involved
in self-monitoring, turning off,

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and this area that's thought
to be autobiographical,

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or self-expressive, turning on.

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We think, at least in this preliminary --

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it's one study; it's probably wrong,
but it's one study --

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(Laughter)

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we think that at least
a reasonable hypothesis

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is that, to be creative,

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you should have this weird dissociation
in your frontal lobe.

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One area turns on,
and a big area shuts off,

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so that you're not inhibited,
you're willing to make mistakes,

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so that you're not constantly
shutting down

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all of these new generative impulses.

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Now a lot of people know that music
is not always a solo activity --

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sometimes it's done communicatively.

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The next question was:

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What happens when musicians
are trading back and forth,

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something called "trading fours,"

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which is something they do
normally in a jazz experiment.

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So this is a 12-bar blues,

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and I've broken it
down into four-bar groups,

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so you would know how you would trade.

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We brought a musician
into the scanner, same way,

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had them memorize this melody

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then had another musician
out in the control room

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trading back and forth interactively.

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So this is a musician, Mike Pope,

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one of the world's best bassists
and a fantastic piano player.

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(Music)

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He's now playing the piece
that we just saw

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a little better than I wrote it.

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(Video) CL: Mike, come on in.

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Mike Pope: May the force be with you.

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Nurse: Nothing in your pockets, Mike?

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MP: No. Nothing's in my pockets.

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CL: You have to have the right
attitude to agree to do it.

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(Laughter)

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It's kind of fun, actually.

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(Music)

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Now we're playing back and forth.

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He's in there.
You can see his legs up there.

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(Music)

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And then I'm in the control room here,
playing back and forth.

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(Music)

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(Music ends)

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(Video) Mike Pope:
This is a pretty good representation

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of what it's like.

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And it's good that it's not too quick.

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The fact that we do it over and over again

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lets you acclimate to your surroundings.

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So the hardest thing for me
was the kinesthetic thing,

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looking at my hands through two mirrors,

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laying on my back,

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and not able to move at all
except for my hand.

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That was challenging.

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But again --

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there were moments, for sure --

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(Laughter)

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there were moments of real, honest-to-God
musical interplay, for sure.

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CL: At this point,
I'll take a few moments.

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So what you're seeing here --

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and I'm doing a cardinal sin in science,

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which is to show you preliminary data.

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This is one subject's data.

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This is, in fact, Mike Pope's data.

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So what am I showing you here?

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When he was trading fours with me,
improvising vs. memorized,

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his language areas lit up,
his Broca's area,

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in the inferior frontal gyrus on the left.

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He had it also homologous on the right.

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This is an area thought to be
involved in expressive communication.

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This whole notion
that music is a language --

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maybe there's a neurologic
basis to it after all,

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and we can see it when two musicians
are having a musical conversation.

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So we've done this on eight subjects now,

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and we're getting all the data together,

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hopefully we'll have something
to say about it meaningfully.

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Now when I think about improvisation
and the language, what's next?

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Rap, of course, rap -- freestyle.

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I've always been fascinated by freestyle.

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And let's play this video.

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(Video) Mos Def: Brown skin I be,
standing five-ten I be

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Rockin' it when I be, in your vicinity

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Whole-style synergy, recognize symmetry

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Go and try to injure me,
broke 'em down chemically

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Ain't the number 10 MC,
talk about how been I be

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Styled it like Kennedy,
late like a 10 to three

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When I say when I be,
girls say bend that key cut

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CL: So there's a lot of analogy

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between what takes place
in freestyle rap and jazz.

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There are a lot of correlates
between the two forms of music,

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I think, in different time periods,
in lot of ways,

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rap serves the same social function
that jazz used to serve.

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So how do you study rap scientifically?

00:12:19.841 --> 00:12:22.976
And my colleagues think I'm crazy,
but I think it's very viable.

00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:24.227
This is what you do:

00:12:24.251 --> 00:12:26.998
You have a freestyle artist come
and memorize a rap

00:12:27.022 --> 00:12:28.243
that you write for them,

00:12:28.267 --> 00:12:31.699
that they've never heard before,
and then you have them freestyle.

00:12:31.723 --> 00:12:34.141
So I told my lab members
that I would rap for TED,

00:12:34.165 --> 00:12:35.807
and they said, "No, you won't."

00:12:35.831 --> 00:12:37.034
And then I thought --

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00:12:37.058 --> 00:12:38.374
(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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00:12:44.148 --> 00:12:45.428
But here's the thing.

00:12:45.452 --> 00:12:48.353
With this big screen,
you can all rap with me. OK?

00:12:48.377 --> 00:12:50.221
So what we had them do

00:12:50.245 --> 00:12:52.841
was memorize this lower-left
sound icon, please.

00:12:52.865 --> 00:12:55.758
This is the control condition.
This is what they memorized.

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00:12:55.782 --> 00:12:57.815
Computer: Memory, thump.

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00:12:57.839 --> 00:12:59.976
CL: Thump of the beat in a known repeat

00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:02.976
Rhythm and rhyme, they make me complete

00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:05.096
The climb is sublime when I'm on the mic

00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:07.676
Spittin' rhymes that hit you
like a lightning strike

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00:13:07.700 --> 00:13:08.864
Computer: Search.

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00:13:08.888 --> 00:13:11.232
CL: I search for the truth
in this eternal quest

00:13:11.256 --> 00:13:13.986
My passion's not fashion,
you can see how I'm dressed

00:13:14.010 --> 00:13:15.976
Psychopathic words in my head appear

00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:18.238
Whisper these lyrics only I can hear

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00:13:18.262 --> 00:13:19.434
Computer: Art.

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00:13:19.458 --> 00:13:22.088
CL: The art of discovering
and that which is hovering

00:13:22.112 --> 00:13:23.976
Inside the mind of those unconfined

00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:26.976
All of these words keep
pouring out like rain

00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:29.735
I need a mad scientist to check my brain

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00:13:29.759 --> 00:13:31.066
Computer: Stop.

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00:13:31.090 --> 00:13:38.090
(Applause)

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00:13:40.270 --> 00:13:42.444
I guarantee you
that will never happen again.

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00:13:42.468 --> 00:13:44.409
(Laughter)

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00:13:44.433 --> 00:13:46.621
So now, what's great
about these free-stylers,

00:13:46.645 --> 00:13:48.507
they will get cued different words.

00:13:48.531 --> 00:13:49.975
They don't know what's coming,

00:13:49.999 --> 00:13:51.915
but they'll hear something off the cuff.

00:13:51.939 --> 00:13:53.348
Go hit that right sound icon,

00:13:53.372 --> 00:13:56.092
there will be cued three square words:
like, not and head.

00:13:56.116 --> 00:13:58.270
He doesn't know what's coming.
Computer: Like.

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00:13:58.294 --> 00:14:00.064
Freestyler: I'm like some kind of

00:14:00.088 --> 00:14:02.317
extraterrestrial, celestial scene

00:14:02.341 --> 00:14:05.178
Back in the days, I used to sit
in pyramids and meditate

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:05.202 --> 00:14:07.375
With two microphones -- Computer: Head

00:14:07.399 --> 00:14:08.733
hovering over my head

00:14:08.757 --> 00:14:10.120
See if I could still listen,

00:14:10.144 --> 00:14:11.431
spittin' off the sound

00:14:11.455 --> 00:14:12.640
See what you grinning

00:14:12.664 --> 00:14:15.089
I teach the children
in the back of the classroom

00:14:15.113 --> 00:14:17.510
About the message of apocalyptical

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00:14:17.534 --> 00:14:18.694
Computer: Not.

00:14:18.718 --> 00:14:21.346
Not really though,
'cause I've got to keep it simple

00:14:21.370 --> 00:14:22.976
instrumental

00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:25.976
Detrimental playing Super Mario

00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:29.153
boxes [unclear] hip hop

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00:14:29.177 --> 00:14:30.597
Computer: Stop.

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00:14:30.621 --> 00:14:32.932
CL: It's an incredible
thing that's taking place.

00:14:32.956 --> 00:14:35.182
It's doing something
neurologically remarkable.

00:14:35.206 --> 00:14:37.522
Whether or not you like
the music is irrelevant.

00:14:37.546 --> 00:14:39.947
Creatively speaking,
it's just a phenomenal thing.

00:14:39.971 --> 00:14:42.487
This is a short video
of how we do this in a scanner.

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00:14:42.511 --> 00:14:44.026
[fMRI of Hip-Hop Rap]

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00:14:44.050 --> 00:14:45.186
(Laughter)

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00:14:45.210 --> 00:14:46.984
(Video) CL: We're here with Emmanuel.

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00:14:47.008 --> 00:14:49.314
CL: That was recorded
in the scanner, by the way.

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00:14:49.338 --> 00:14:51.447
(Video) CL: That's Emmanuel
in the scanner.

00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:54.000
He's just memorized a rhyme for us.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:55.042 --> 00:14:57.725
[Control Condition Memorized Verses]

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:57.749 --> 00:14:59.976
Emmanuel: Top of the beat with no repeat

00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:02.976
Rhythm and rhyme make me complete

00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:05.976
Climb is sublime when I'm on the mic

00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:08.774
Spittin' rhymes that'll hit you
like a lightning strike

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:08.798 --> 00:15:09.956
Computer: Search.

00:15:09.980 --> 00:15:12.240
I search for the truth
in this eternal quest

00:15:12.264 --> 00:15:14.840
I'm passing on fashion;
you can see how I'm dressed

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:14.864 --> 00:15:17.927
CL: I'm going to stop that there;
so what do we see in his brain?

00:15:17.951 --> 00:15:19.609
This is four rappers' brains.

00:15:19.633 --> 00:15:21.669
And we do see language areas lighting up,

00:15:21.693 --> 00:15:22.976
but then, eyes closed --

00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:26.313
when you are freestyling vs. memorizing,

00:15:26.337 --> 00:15:28.491
you've got major visual areas lighting up.

00:15:28.515 --> 00:15:32.204
You've got major cerebellar activity,
which is involved in motor coordination.

00:15:32.228 --> 00:15:35.584
You have heightened brain activity
when you're doing a comparable task,

00:15:35.608 --> 00:15:38.566
when that one task is creative
and the other task is memorized.

00:15:38.590 --> 00:15:41.374
It's very preliminary,
but I think it's kind of cool.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:41.398 --> 00:15:43.706
To conclude, we've got
a lot of questions to ask,

00:15:43.730 --> 00:15:46.635
and like I said, we'll ask questions
here, not answer them.

00:15:46.659 --> 00:15:50.110
But we want to get at the root
of what is creative genius neurologically,

00:15:50.134 --> 00:15:52.691
and I think, with these methods,
we're getting close.

00:15:52.715 --> 00:15:55.018
And I think, hopefully
in the next 10, 20 years,

00:15:55.042 --> 00:15:56.939
you'll see real, meaningful studies

00:15:56.963 --> 00:15:59.976
that say science has to catch up to art,

00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:02.388
and maybe we're starting now to get there.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:02.412 --> 00:16:04.410
Thank you for your time, I appreciate it.

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00:16:04.434 --> 00:16:08.442
(Applause)