October 2020

^{Charles Limb giving his Keynote Presentation at SfNC 2019}

Last March 2019, we were excited to attend the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity’s (SfNC) annual conference. The mission of SfNC is to foster research on neural and cognitive bases of creativity and to provide a forum for communicating this research. SfNC is a relatively new and critical organization that works to unify and grow the study of the neuroscience of creativity across the country. At the conference, Dr. Charles Limb gave a keynote speech and Dr. Barrett presented a poster on a project we affectionately call “Pianokids.”

Dr. Limb gave an overview of why it’s important to study creativity — creativity is closely linked to human survival and evolution. Dr. Limb emphasizes that “[while] creativity is magical, it’s not magic.” Creativity is a product of normal human brain activity, and therefore can and should be investigated using scientific research paradigms. In his keynote presentation, he presented past research as well as our research currently supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Dr. Barrett presented her “Pianokids” poster investigating the neural correlates of musical improvisation in elementary school aged children (9-11 years old) with no musical training. Using an innovative paradigm based on the pentatonic scale, participants improvised melodies or played a scale repeatedly while being scanned in an fMRI scanner, thereby allowing us to see the brain activity associated with the improvisation in contrast to a more “rote” musical activity.

The Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity has its virtual meeting coming up on October 22-23^rd, 2020. Dr. Barrett will be presenting a poster talk on work supported by funding from the NEA at 1 PM on Friday October 23^rd. To learn more about this academic society, become members of the society, or learn about the conference, check out their website: https://www.tsfnc.org/

May 2019

As part of our NEA keystone project, we are scanning internationally-renowned musicians as case studies. These eminent improvisers will complete both tasks tailored to their individual talents as well as a common improvisation task in order to be compared as a case series on how improvisation may manifest in outstanding artists. While much of the current creativity research focuses on group studies which average together the results of many subjects, there may be some merit in considering each artist as a unique data point. See our discussion of this in our recently published article from our lab.

We recently had the opportunity to test Fantastic Negrito, who just won his 2^nd Grammy award, as one of our imminent musicians. Wired magazine filmed us to document the experience as we scanned Fantastic Negrito in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner at UCSF Mission Bay. Check it out in their latest tech video as well as see some of the other interesting music and neuroscience work being done in the field:

https://www.wired.com/story/tech-effects-how-does-music-affect-your-brain/

April 2019

We’ve been busy getting going with our NEA project.

How do we use the scientific method to study creativity? Our past experiments have primarily focused on musical improvisation. In one of our studies, trained jazz musicians would lie on their backs in the scanner so that their heads were within the fMRI scanner (Limb & Braun, 2008). They held a custom-built, non-ferromagnetic keyboard on their laps and played music with their right hand, being careful to hold the rest of their bodies still so that we could acquire clear brain images. Even in this atypical performance environment, we saw distinct differences in brain activity associated with improvisation in comparison to pre-practiced or pre-learned music. In another experiment, we investigated brain activity associated collaborative improvisation by having a jazz musician in the scanner alternating playing music with an experimenter in the control room, a jazz paradigm known as “trading fours” (Donnay et al., 2014).

Hear about these studies and some of our past work here in Charles Limb’s TED Talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/charles_limb_your_brain_on_improv

Dr. Charles Limb is the Francis A. Sooy Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and the Chief of the Division of Otology, Neurotology and Skull Base Surgery at UCSF. He is also the Director of the Douglas Grant Cochlear Implant Center at UCSF and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Neurosurgery.

Dr. Limb’s expertise covers the full scope of otology and neurotology, with a focus on the treatment of hearing loss and auditory disorders. He specializes in all surgery of the temporal bone, with particular expertise in acoustic neuroma surgery, cochlear implant surgery, implantable hearing aids, stapes surgery, cholesteatoma surgery, and cancers of the ear. His current areas of research focus on the study of the neural basis of musical creativity as well as the study of music perception in deaf individuals with cochlear implants. He is the past Editor-in-Chief of Trends in Amplification (now Trends in Hearing), the only journal explicitly focused on auditory amplification devices and hearing aids, and an Editorial Board member of the journals Otology and Neurotology and Music and Medicine. His work has received international attention and has been featured by National Public Radio, TED, National Geographic, the New York Times, PBS, CNN, Scientific American, the British Broadcasting Company, the Smithsonian Institute, the Library of Congress, the Sundance Film Festival, Canadian Broadcasting Company, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the American Museum of Natural History.

Karen Barrett is a post-doctoral scholar at UCSF. She completed her Ph.D. in Music Theory and Cognition at Northwestern University, where she worked with Richard Ashley and Nina Kraus investigating music and attention, as well as music and neural plasticity using perceptual and neural techniques. Prior to her Ph.D., Karen’s education included dual master’s degrees in piano performance and musicology from Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Music and Neuroscience from Wellesley College. In addition to her research, Karen has taught music theory classes at Northwestern University as well as introductory graduate and undergraduate music cognition classes at Peabody Conservatory of Music and Johns Hopkins University. Outside of her career as a musician scientist, Karen is a book lover, foodie, and explorer of outdoor activities in the Bay Area.

Nicole Jiam is a resident physician in the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at UCSF. Nicole’s research expertise involves flat panel CT imaging, music perception, and cochlear implants. She completed her M.D. at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she began working with Dr. Charles Limb on issues relating to cochlear implantation, complex sound processing, and high-resolution imaging. Prior to her M.D., Nicole graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in neuroscience and worked with Dr. Michela Gallagher and Dr. Richard Huganir investigating the neurobiology of learning and memory. As a National Institutes of Health M-STREAM and MHIRT research fellow, Nicole has been funded to investigate AMPA receptor trafficking and the effects of perinatal stress on neuro-immunology. She currently serves on the board of directors at the San Francisco Opera BRAVO Club. She is a musician (violin, viola, and piano), opera aficionado, and artist in her free-time.

Melanie Gilbert is a cochlear implant research audiologist in the Music and Sound Perception Lab at UCSF. She completed her Au.D. at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee (2012), wrote her capstone project on hearing healthcare resources and needs in Central America, and completed the Pediatric Specialty Track. She obtained her B.A. from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon (2004) where she majored in computer science and math. She completed her audiology externship at UCLA (2011-2012) and went on to work in Research and Technology department at Advanced Bionics (2012-2015) where she focused on novel sound processing and sound cleaning features, directional microphone improvements, mapping methodology optimization, objective measures of programming, and pitch perception. Dr. Gilbert enjoys mentoring students and currently teaches the cochlear implant course for the audiology doctoral program at University of the Pacific in San Francisco.

Stephanie Purnell is a Junior Specialist in the Sound and Music Perception lab at UCSF. She obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA (2017). As an undergraduate, she volunteered in Dr. Andrea Halpern’s Music Cognition lab, assisting with projects related to music and memory. She assisted with a project on transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) and memory for melodies in Dr. Amir-Homayoun Javadi’s lab at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK (2016). She spent the summer of 2018 as an Americorps volunteer collecting botany field data in the Toquima and Toiyabe mountains in Nevada. In her free time, Stephanie enjoys hiking, backpacking, biking, snowboarding, and rock climbing.

Meredith Caldwell is a research specialist in the UCSF Limb Lab. She attended Clemson University as a biological sciences major. Meredith previously worked at Johns Hopkins University with Dr. Charles Limb in music perception and cognition research, focusing particularly on musical emotion perception and processing in cochlear implant recipients. She additionally worked at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics on projects including ethical issues in the nursing profession and character development in medical education. In her free time, Meredith enjoys music of all kinds, particularly a cappella, and volunteers at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. Meredith is applying to nursing school and plans to pursue a career as a nurse practitioner.

Lauren Jacobs is a research specialist in the UCSF Limb Lab. She graduated from Tufts University with a degree in Clinical Psychology and Music. Lauren previously worked at the Child CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy) Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, and at the ICoN (Integrative Cognitive Neuroscience) Lab at Tufts University. At MGH Lauren researched the behavioral effects of biofeedback video games on anger management in children, as well as oxytocin on social interactions in adult men with ASD, (Autism Spectrum Disorders) with Dr. Dina Hirshfeld-Becker. At the ICoN Lab, Lauren researched the effects of musical rhythm on visual long-term memory with Dr. Elizabeth Race, and with help from Dr. Aniruddh Patel. In her free time she enjoys singing and playing a variety of instruments. Lauren plans to apply to graduate school in the future.