RAP makes us smarter

Rap originated in the quarters inhabited by black Americans, became the subject of scientific research. Such a direction is an unusual style as freestyle (improvisation) opens scientist the secrets of the processes occurring in the brain.


Freestyle in rap, when the singer comes up with the text of his recitative right during execution, enjoys great popularity. This area requires not only musical skills, but also special skills almost instantly to compose texts using the incredible thoughts.




Recently, American scientists, the staff of the research division of the local Ministry of health National institutes of health (National Institute of Health) was invited to participate in an unusual experiment 12 famous rappers in the country, which in recent years has shown the best results in numerous competitions in freestyle.




The researchers examined the brain activity of each artist in real time using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).




First, the subjects sang while in the MRI scanner, pre-learned text, written specifically for this study songs, and during the second phase of the experiment was improvising, performing their own texts, composed extemporaneously.




The authors found significant differences in the activity of the brain parts of the subjects in the first and second cases, despite the superficial similarity of the behavior of participants in both phases.




During the execution of improvised text significantly increased nervous connections of the medial frontal cortex with areas responsible for speech, and the activity of the amygdala, which generates emotional responses.




At the end of the execution of improvised recitative each of the participants showed a significant increase in the activity of the upper regions of the frontal cortex is necessary for the effective completion of the text and allowed the brain to enable additional features.




"Although our study involved only rappers, we believe that similar processes have been observed in other forms of creativity, including writers and artists, and even in some areas of scientific activity", - commented on the results obtained, the leader of this scientific work of Professor Allen brown (Allen Braun).

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