Researchers are discovering that what happens during improvisation, be it through instruments or the spoken word, has a lot to do with feeling free from stress. It makes us more in sync with an optimal state that has been called flow. This is drama as liberating, creative play. This is improv. Drama, along with other creative arts therapies like dance and music, has been shown to lessen anxiety.
The brain gets active during improvisation. Whether it is with a musical instrument or with the spoken word, many areas of the brain get busy, particularly the medial pre-frontal cortex. There is a lot going on in that region. This is why the researchers at Johns Hopkins University are putting improvisers and their brains through their fMRI machines.
Daniel J. Siegel, MD, in "The Mindful Brain", relates several key functions of healthy living to processes of the Middle Prefrontal Cortex: Body Regulation, Attuned Empathic Communication, Emotional Balance and Regulation, Response Flexibility, Insight (integration of the emotional limbic system with the cortical storehouse of autobiographic memory),Fear Modulation, Following Intuition/Gut Instinct, and Morality, which he describes as sensing and acting in accord with a larger social good. That's a lot to be sure, and we are far from clear on what exactly is happening in the brain..
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