Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 23 Issue 5

It is clear that music provokes emotions: what I can do is transfer the essence of a feeling or an emotion, express it in music (4) . As we can see it is much more than a homeostatic balance between human beings and their environment. Somehow, music evokes synchronicity in the brains of the audience in a concert (5) . An example of it is to listen to Keith Jarrett’s Memories of Tomorrow (6) , a piano solo from The Koln Concert (1975): after an applause that lasts several minutes, the audience starts to applaud in a perfect synchrony. But creating, analyzing or improvising music implies the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, especially from the left lobe, traditionally the analytical one. Why? A musical producer or a songwriter has to make decisions: instruments, structure of the song, effects or tone, introducing familiarity and novelty at the same time. A symphonic composer needs to think about the treatment of a musical cell, using homophony or counterpoint, when to use a brass section or woods or strings or percussion, in order to balance the phrases of the score. This is the point we want to explore. To make decisions requires the frontal lobe, especially the dorsolateral and prefrontal cortex. And it allows us to link music and science. What about physics? Solving a physics problem implies the activation of Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas while reading about the situation described, the anterior cingulate cortex (if we think there is something incoherent or not intuitive for us), cerebellum, prefrontal cortex, left dorsolateral cortex, left posterior parietal cortex, hippocampus and retrosplenial cortex, involving visual motion, central executive and default mode processes (7) . Relying on the physical kind of concepts involved, some differences are shown, especially in the intensity of the activation (8) . As we can see, there are common brain structures involved in playing music and solving physics problems. In terms of executive functions, it is remarkable that prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral cortex (specially in the left lobe) and both actions require running different processes in a parallel way. It is possible that playing an instrument and solving a physics problem are reinforcing neural tracts in the same structures and producing more connections among neurons. That would be an explanation for versatility in physicists who are musicians too. This point is highly related to creativity. III. T he C reative P rocess It is well known Wallas described the creative process (9) in four steps in 1926: The first in time I shall call Preparation, the stage during which the problem was 'investigated ... in all directions'; the second is the stage during which he was not consciously thinking about the problem, which I shall call Incubation; the third, consisting of the appearance of the 'happy idea' together with the psychological events which immediately preceded and accompanied that appearance, I shall call Illumination. And I shall add a fourth stage, of Verification … Even though it is not the latest model, it is simple and all newest models are based on Wallas’, basically adding more stages (10) . This model is good enough to discuss the goals of this article. In the preparation stage, we need time to get deeply involved in the question. It could be a mathematical demonstration of a physics law, designing an experiment or the orchestral arrangement of a melody. This stage would be enhanced by motivations. If you are not just working but you are deeply involved in something. You really feel and find it as a deep personal question or activity. The incubation stage is a magical one. You are not thinking about the problem consciously, but your brain is working hard on it, establishing relations among different ideas. Once again, the reason for this stage would be the motivations, the need for a personal answer for a specific problem or natural phenomena in physics or the need for expressing an emotional state through music. Any kind of need runs primarily the limbic system and later on the executive functions on the frontal lobe. As a necessity, the brain starts working on how to solve it even in an unconscious state. From an anthropological point of view the limbic system takes control in the first place due the risky situation for the individual or the group and a decision must be taken as soon as possible. Imagine being in front of a dangerous beast. A decision is taken in a fraction of a second, avoiding the threat or being ready to fight. If you are thirsty and water is not close, the limbic system recruits the frontal lobe and control is taken by executive functions, making a decision about where to go to drink or what to do. Currently, it is a common situation for us when we wake up in the middle of the night thinking about something, a difficulty, a son's illness, an important meeting in the morning or a concert performance, for example. For this stage, two examples are needed, one from music and another from science. Paul McCartney explained that he woke up one day in the morning with a marvelous melody. It just was in his mind. He started to ask the rest of Beatles members if that tune was familiar for them, trying to find the composer. Somehow he came up with that music after a period of unconsciousness about it. He went into the next stage, illumination. Even though McCartney was sleeping and not conscious when the melody came up, he probably had a very deep limbic motivation, need or personal worry that would only be satisfied by music. Let’s remember a quote by Beethoven: music is the mediator © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue V Version I 58 Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 ( ) A Harmonizing Minds: Exploring the Interplay of Music and Physics to Enhance Cognitive Processes in Adolescents