ArticleScientific reports2025
Children engage neural reward structures for creative musical improvisation.
Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Hierarchical neural integration of musical structure during expert performance.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Music-Based Interventions in Childhood Hearing Loss: A Comprehensive Narrative Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Cognitive Enhancement Through Music Education: Affective Pathways to Executive Function Improvement in Musicians.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Neural mechanisms during role-playing in music psychodrama: an fNIRS Hyperscanning study.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Neural Mechanisms of Role Reversal in Improvisational Music Psychodrama: An fNIRS Hyperscanning Study.Brain sciences · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Children spontaneously engage in creative behaviors. However, little is known about the biological underpinnings of creativity in children. We identified neural substrates associated with musical improvisation in children aged 9-11. Participants played a non-ferromagnetic piano keyboard in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner using a musical paradigm that required no prior musical experience, in which they played a rote pattern from memory or improvised melodies using those same notes. fMRI analysis of children's brains during musical improvisation revealed (1) heightened functional connectivity between emotion and reward brain areas and (2) deactivation of auditory, limbic, and parietal structures, particularly the middle temporal gyrus, angular gyrus, precuneus, and cingulate cortex. Importantly, improvisation engaged reward structures more than the control condition. Neural results suggest that children possess nascent creativity networks that form the roots for later adult creativity networks.
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