What is the experience of improvisation and what are its neurobiological correlates? One way to flesh out an answer, or at least to get the lay of the land, so to speak, is to look at how improvisation compares with other kinds of brain states and states of experience that have been explored with science, such as dreaming and psychedelics. That's what we're embarking upon here. In this video, you are going to discover that there are some quite interesting relationships between what's happening in the brain during improvisation and what happens to the brain under the influence of dreaming and classical psychedelics.

References:
Rinpoche, Tenzin Wangyal. Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, The (p. 9). Shambhala. Kindle Edition. 

Seth, A. (2021). Being you: A new science of consciousness. Penguin.
 
Ramachandran, V. S., & Rogers-Ramachandran, D. (2000). Phantom limbs and neural plasticity. Archives of neurology, 57(3), 317-320.

Braun, A. R., Balkin, T. J., Wesenten, N. J., Carson, R. E., Varga, M., Baldwin, P., ... & Herscovitch, P. (1997). Regional cerebral blood flow throughout the sleep-wake cycle. An H2 (15) O PET study. Brain: a journal of neurology, 120(7), 1173-1197.

Kraehenmann, R. (2017). Dreams and psychedelics: neurophenomenological comparison and therapeutic implications. Current neuropharmacology, 15(7), 1032-1042.

Petri, G., Expert, P., Turkheimer, F., Carhart-Harris, R., Nutt, D., Hellyer, P. J., & Vaccarino, F. (2014). Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 11(101), 20140873.

Carhart-Harris, R. L., Leech, R., Hellyer, P. J., Shanahan, M., Feilding, A., Tagliazucchi, E., ... & Nutt, D. (2014). The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 20.

Dolan, D., Jensen, H. J., Mediano, P. A., Molina-Solana, M., Rajpal, H., Rosas, F., & Sloboda, J. A. (2018). The improvisational state of mind: A multidisciplinary study of an improvisatory approach to classical music repertoire performance. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1341.

Neuroscience of Improvisation video on changes in prefrontal cortex activation associated with improvisation:  https://youtu.be/_lcaXsuDRIw

Tagliazucchi E., Carhart-Harris R., Leech R., Nutt D., Chialvo D.R. Enhanced repertoire of brain dynamical states during the psychedelic experience. Hum. Brain Mapp. 2014;35(11):5442–5456. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.22562]. [PMID: 24989126]. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar] [Ref list]
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.6466.pdf

Muthukumaraswamy, S. D., Carhart-Harris, R. L., Moran, R. J., Brookes, M. J., Williams, T. M., Errtizoe, D., ... & Nutt, D. J. (2013). Broadband cortical desynchronization underlies the human psychedelic state. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(38), 15171-15183.