Neuroscience of Improvisation Across Music and Other Domains: A Survey and Outlook

Abstract

Improvisation (or Improv), the real-time generation of novel, context-appropriate action, occurs in music, dance, theater, sport, education, therapy, and professional practice. Its neuroscience, however, has been studied almost exclusively for music, where most quantitative neuroimaging evidence lies. A PRISMA-style search done by authors quantifies this imbalance: of 111 identified studies, 70.3\% concern musical improvisation or general psychometric creativity. This explains why earlier surveys are either music-centered or confined to a single construct. This survey addresses that gap in two ways. First, for music, it organizes findings from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), hyperscanning, neurofeedback, and brain stimulation, and reports transparently where the evidence agrees (e.g., experience-dependent changes in frontal engagement, increased frontal alpha and theta power) and where it is heterogeneous (e.g., the direction of lateral prefrontal activity, hemispheric lateralization, the interpretation of alpha power). Second, it extends the review to dance, theater, sport, education, therapy, and professional practice, where behavioral, qualitative, and simulation-based studies predominate. Overall, the current evidence does not point to a universal neural signature of improvisation within music domain or other domains. We conclude with an outlook on wearable EEG--fNIRS sensing and closed-loop brain--computer interfaces for musical improvisation, the domain with sufficient evidence, formulated as an expertise-gated control problem and discussed as a possible complement to deliberate practice, and we list the evidence needed for other domains.