Ted Talk Summary

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In this Ted Talk, Charles Limb talks about a thesis or question he has. Is it truly possible to study creativity scientifically? What is the science of creativity? Limb then went on to talk about three studies he did with this concept in mind. Two of these studies involved jazz music, the other rapping. In the first investigation, Limb studied the brain activity that occurred when someone was improvising jazz music. He found that,”We had this focal area called the medial prefrontal cortex that went way up in activity. We had this broad patch of area called the lateral prefrontal cortex that went way down in activity…We have this combination of an area that's thought to be involved in self-monitoring, turning off, and this area that's thought to be self-expressive, turning on. And we think, that a reasonable hypothesis is that, to be creative, you have to have this weird dissociation in your frontal lobe. One area turns on, and a big area shuts off, so that you're willing to make mistakes, so that you're not constantly shutting down all of these new generative impulses.” After discovering this, Limb continued to expand and study this hypothesis. He found that when …show more content…
The science of creativity. He isn’t trying to convince people to play the piano, or telling the story of Beethoven’s life. He said, “From a scientific perspective -- we talked a lot about innovation today -- the science of innovation, and truly, we know very little about how we are able to be creative. And so I think that we're going to see over the next 10, 20, 30 years a real science of creativity that's burgeoning and is going to flourish. Because we now have new methods that can enable us to take this process of something like this, complex jazz improvisation, and study it rigorously.” Limb gives a statement, evidence to back it up, and then explains the evidence. This shows that his purpose is to educate people of this advanced