Nate Ball TEDMED2011: Got a Good Beat?

In Blog Posts By Jay Goldman, VP, Innovation and Emerging Channels

Part of our TEDMED2011 coverage. See our Welcome Post for a full index.

Nate Ball is one cool dude. He’s an MIT trained mechanical engineer who spends his time building stuff like the Batman-style Atlas Power Ascender grappling hook gun that save armed forces from certain peril. When’s he not busy doing that, Nate spends his time beatboxing, one of the five pillars of hip hop culture (DJing, MCing, break dancing, graffiti, and beatboxing).

Nate treated us to some live demos of his skill, which was pretty impressive. He also brought Dr. Charles Limb back up on stage to co-present the results of an MRI study they did on creativity and improvisation. Nate climbed into an MRI scanner and boxed the first beat he’d ever learned, which requires no creativity or improvisation on his part. He then freestyled a new beat that he’d never done before, triggering a whole new series of brain patterns. Charles recorded the resulting MRI scans, showing that Nate’s brain performed all kinds of different tricks when he was making new things up. Subtracting the two showed that Nate actually switches off his pre-frontal cortex while improvising, allowing him to light up his cerebellum and focus on the music and not on the so-called ‘executive functions’ it normally controls:

The most typical psychological term for functions carried out by the prefrontal cortex area is executive function. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social “control” (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes). – Wikipedia

That would have made for a great talk by itself, but then Nate volunteered to have an endoscope (fiber optic camera) stuck up his nose and into his throat so we could watch his vocal chords while he did his thing. Here’s a not-horrible photo from CNN Health:

The big part that looks a bit like a Pringles chip at the bottom of the screen is actually Nate’s tongue. It was fascinating to watch – not a lot of takeaway value – but getting a deep look into mechanics of beatboxing was a wonderfully surprising TEDMED moment.

Part of our TEDMED2011 coverage. See our Welcome Post for a full index.