Brain-to-brain communication during musical improvisation: a performance case study [version 4; peer review: 1 approved, 2 approved with reservations]

Understanding and predicting others' actions in ecological settings is an important research goal in social neuroscience. Here, we deployed a mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) methodology to analyze inter-brain communication between professional musicians during a live jazz performance. Specifically, bispectral analysis was conducted to assess the synchronization of scalp electroencephalographic (EEG) signals from three expert musicians during a three-part 45 minute jazz performance, during which a new musician joined every five minutes. The bispectrum was estimated for all musician dyads, electrode combinations, and five frequency bands. The results showed higher bispectrum in the beta and gamma frequency bands (13-50 Hz) when more musicians performed together, and when they played a musical phrase synchronously. Positive bispectrum amplitude changes were found approximately three seconds prior to the identified synchronized performance events suggesting preparatory cortical activity predictive of concerted behavioral action. Moreover, a higher amount of synchronized EEG activity, across electrode regions, was observed as more musicians performed, with inter-brain synchronization between the temporal, parietal, and occipital regions the most frequent. Increased synchrony between the musicians' brain activity reflects shared multi-sensory processing and movement intention in a musical improvisation task

Examining the Improvisational Creative Process in the Visual Arts: A Mobile Brain Body Imaging Approach

Mobile brain/body imaging (MoBI) for the study of the human improvisational creative process. In the spirit of the "Exquisite Corpse," an improvisational creative game, three artists created three art-pieces. The artists were equipped with 64 channel wireless EEG (2 channel EOG) and 3 inertial measurement units on forearms and head. We report the most relevant features for offline classification both in motion and EEG data pertaining to baseline, planning, and execution phases, of the improvisational creative process. The angular velocity in the left-right direction and the magnitude ratio (right / left hand) of the movement jerk were features that consistently shared the most mutual information with the class labels. The most relevant features for classification in the EEG data varied for each artist, and relate to their approach to the artwork. These features were mostly found in the parietal, central and frontal electrodes across frequency bands and time-domain features.Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department o