Auditory-Motor Interactions in Musical Creativity

Abstract

We naturally think of music as an auditory art—and yet neuroscientific studies on creative musicians consistently implicate regions associated not with auditory processing but with motor processing. These strange findings imply that the regions we call “auditory” and “motoric” have been misnamed or that our natural assumptions about music being primarily auditory stand to be revised. As the regions implicated in musical creativity studies are specifically implicated in the higher-cognitive aspect of motor behavior known as motor sequencing (including the premotor cortex, the supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas, and Brodmann area 44 of the inferior frontal gyrus), the natural question to arise is: in what way is music like a motor sequence? To address this question, this essay explores, first, where the auditory and motor cortices are located in the neocortex and how they interface with one another; second, how the substrates of the motor-sequencing system give rise to an organism’s ability to learn, execute, and be creative with sequences of motor actions; and, finally, what differentiates sequences of sounds from sequences of actions—and how reconceptualizing music through the motor-sequencing lens sheds new light on ages-old questions related to music, creativity, and the brain.