Neural Resonance and Semantic Leaps: Mapping the Intersubjective Terrain of Musical Improvisation

This chapter examines how neuroscientific methods can illuminate the intersubjective dimensions of musical improvisation. Drawing from cognitive neuroscience studies comparing jazz and classical musicians, we demonstrate how training backgrounds shape not only creative outputs but also the underlying neural dynamics that facilitate intersubjective understanding during improvisation. Our research reveals that jazz-trained improvisers exhibit distinctive neural signatures: faster recognition of musical unexpectedness, quicker return to baseline brain activity, and more globally connected cortical networks that bridge the Default Mode Network and Executive Control Network. Moreover, using a novel Bohlen-Pierce scale interface—a non-octave-based musical system free from established cultural expectations—we developed methodologies for studying improvisation that mitigate the white racial frame prevalent in music theory education. This approach has revealed how semantic centers emerge when different individuals imagine narratives while listening to the same music, with cultural boundaries significantly constraining intersubjective understanding. By analyzing improvisations through multiple lenses—musical information retrieval, natural language processing of imagined narratives, and neural oscillations during creative performance—we bridge the gap between quantitative metrics of originality and the intersubjective dimensions of appropriateness central to creativity. This interdisciplinary framework offers new pathways for understanding musical improvisation not merely as individual creative expression, but as an embodied, culturally-situated practice that reveals how brains synchronize and storytelling aligns across intersubjective spaces.