Musical Perception and Visual Imagery: Do Musicians visualize while Performing?

Abstract

What happens inside the performer’s brain when he is performing and composing a particular musical piece? Are there some specific regions in brain which are activated when an artist is creating or imaging a musical piece in his brain? Do the regions remain the same when the artist is listening to the same piece sung or played by him? These are the questions that perplexed neuroscientists for a long time. The endeavor to obtain insights to brain processes that take place during listening as well as composing music has been attempted several times by musicologists and psychologists. In this study we strive to answer these questions from a better scientific point of view by using latest state-of-the-art techniques to assess brain response. An EEG experiment was conducted on two eminent performers of Indian classical music, when they mentally created the “alap” of a “raga” (Jay Jayanti) in their mind (without performing) as well as when they listened to their own performance of the same raga. The beauty of Hindustani music lies in the fact that the musician is himself the composer and recreates the imagery of the raga in his mind while performing, hence the scope of creative improvisations are immense. The noise removed EEG time series data were analyzed mainly using robust non linear techniques like MFDFA and MFDXA to quantitatively assess the arousal based activity and the degree of cross-correlation of each EEG frequency rhythm in different combination of electrodes from frontal, occipital and temporal lobes. A strong response was found in the occipital and fronto-occipital region both during mental improvisation and listening of the raga, which is an interesting revelation of this study. Strong retentive features were obtained in regard to both alpha and theta rhythms in musical listening in different parts of the brain.

Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures.

— Rabindranath Tagore.