M. Arias Gómez
Neurosciences and History 2025;13(3):181-188
Article type: Original
AUTHOR
M. Arias Gómez
Neurology Department. Hospital Clínico Universitario de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
ABSTRACT
Creativity may be defined as the individual or collective ability to generate novel and useful ideas, considering the temporal and cultural context in which these ideas arise and crystallise into works. This brain function is of great evolutionary importance and, in the case of music, plays a major cultural role, since music is a language involving particular brain processes, and has been present across all civilisations and historical periods. Heredity and the environment, including learning and practice, play a role in musical creativity, which involves different neural networks. We should highlight the central role of the dialogue/struggle between the default mode network (introspection) and the executive control network (decision-making), moderated by the salience/relevance network (insula). This ability also involves the motor system, the reward system, mirror neurons (empathy), and the limbic system, which provides the basis for musical creativity (emotional states). Musical creativity does not require a particularly high intelligence quotient. Through different neurophysiological and neuroimaging techniques, both structural and functional, the involvement of these neural networks and the central role of the right hemisphere and the prefrontal lobe are becoming increasingly clear. Musical creativity is a complex phenomenon and, at present, only a small proportion of the underlying brain mechanisms is known.
KEYWORDS
Neuromusicology, neuroscience and creativity, musical creativity, competitive neural networks
Neurosciences and History 2025;13(3):181-188