Creative Flow Study Reveals How Expertise and Letting Go Shape the Brain

Getting into ‘the zone’ for creative work can be difficult, even for people who have experienced it before. Across many different pursuits, people chase this celebrated mental state, often in the hope of finding only a few minutes of enjoyable, seemingly effortless productivity.

Known as ‘flow’, this frame of mind is a genuine psychological phenomenon, although it remains incompletely understood. New research from Drexel University in the US offers a clearer picture of what occurs in the human brain during flow – and suggests ways in which it may be reached.

Creative flow, expertise and letting go

The study identifies two central ingredients behind creative flow: considerable experience in an activity and the surrender of conscious control.

With time, extensive experience develops a network of brain regions capable of producing the types of ideas a person seeks, the researchers say. Relinquishing conscious control then enables that network to take charge.

Creative flow was first identified and examined in the last century by the prominent psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It describes an absorbing mental condition that appears to encourage enjoyment, inspiration and persistence.

In Csikszentmihalyi’s words, flow is "a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it."

Jazz guitarists tested in Drexel University study

For the latest research, 32 jazz guitarists aged between 18 and 55 took part. The volunteers had received between four and 33 years of musical training. Each guitarist improvised during sessions of roughly 90 minutes while an electroencephalogram (EEG) electrode cap recorded their brain activity.

Earlier research has indicated that musical improvisation appears to engage brain regions linked with self-expression, including language and visual imagery, while reducing activity in areas involved in inhibition.

In this new study, the scientists set out to investigate an unresolved question about the nature of flow.

One interpretation holds that flow is a state of intense focus that excludes distractions, thereby improving performance on a particular task. Yet, as Csikszentmihalyi himself observed, those who experience flow commonly portray it not as hyperfocus but as a release of control, rather like allowing oneself to be carried along by running water.

To examine these two accounts of creative flow, the researchers connected the guitarists to high-density EEGs and asked them to improvise six jazz songs accompanied by programmed drums, bass and piano. Afterwards, the musicians scored the intensity of their own flow experience.

This produced 192 recordings of jazz improvisations. The researchers played each recording separately to four jazz specialists, who assessed creativity and other characteristics.

The team also examined the EEG data to establish which areas of the guitarists’ brains were linked to improvisations performed in high-flow states.

Brain activity during creative flow

The findings showed that guitarists with greater experience entered creative flow more often, and more intensely, while improvising than those with less experience.

Experience-based expertise is one element of the secret to flow, the researchers note, but it is not the whole explanation.

The EEG readings also revealed lower activity in the superior frontal gyri, a brain area connected to executive control. That result is consistent with the view that creative flow depends partly on reduced conscious control, or ‘going with the flow’.

Taken together, the findings support an "expertise-plus-release" model of creative flow, according to co-author John Kounios, director of the Creativity Research Lab.

"A practical implication of these results is that productive flow states can be attained by practice to build up expertise in a particular creative outlet coupled with training to withdraw conscious control when enough expertise has been achieved," Kounios says. "This can be the basis for new techniques for instructing people to produce creative ideas."

He says the approach could benefit anyone.

"If you want to be able to stream ideas fluently, then keep working on those musical scales, physics problems or whatever else you want to do creatively – computer coding, fiction writing – you name it," Kounios says.

"But then, try letting go," he adds. "As jazz great Charlie Parker said, 'You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.'"

The study appeared in Neuropsychologia.