“Useful Biomarkers of Aesthetic Creativity”

Where does human creativity come from, and how can music cognition provide insight towards what it means to be creative? In this talk I will describe our recent efforts to understand and use our knowledge in musical creativity. I will begin by describing very recent work on jazz improvisation as a model of creativity, which entails perceptual (psychophysical) testing as well as electrophysiological measures of expectation and anticipation. From there I will turn towards human emotional experiences towards creative works, specifically the aesthetic rewards from musical listening. Finally I will share some ongoing attempts to capitalize on these perceptual and aesthetic factors to create new music, by mapping electrophysiological data to sound, in an effort to detect abnormal brain activity in neurological disorders such as epilepsy.