Science Bulletins: Jazz on the Brain

“Jazz is absolutely defined by improvisation,“ says Charles Limb, who is both a jazz saxophonist and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. “Once you get past the mechanics of the instrument, you’re not as concerned with the execution as the conception.“ This moment of conception is what Limb and colleague Allen Braun captured in the brain in a recent experiment. Limb and Braun used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to m