Can you look at my brain and say, "Oh, yes, you're in a flow state"?

Well, I think the first thing to do is start with the behavior.

So the real trick is defining when the artist or artists are in flow, and, uh, it's really like a three-pronged approach where we could ask the audience and we could ask Mike in, in real time while he's performing.

We have a, a pedal he could indicate when he feels like he's flowing.

And then we have kind of our secret weapon, um, which is, uh, Mike's longtime producer and sound engineer, Jared Slomov, um, whose job is to find those moments of musical articulation that are amazing, that are the flow.

And with s- with this three-pronged approach, we could then say, "Okay, this part of the song is flow for Mike," or, "This part of the song is flow for the whole band." Um, and then once we've defined that behavior, we can look back at the brain states and lo and behold, uh, the brain acts a little bit differently during flow than non-flow.

[upbeat music] Is musical flow state different from flow in other activities, like sports for example?

There are probably similarities and differences, but when we look kind of across the literature, um, the description that Mike gave is actually very consistent with our interpretation of what the brain and the physiology is doing.

Can you look at my brain and say, "Oh, yes, you're in a flow state"?

Well, I think the first thing to do is start with the behavior.

So the real trick is defining when the artist or artists are in flow.

And, uh, it's really like a three-pronged approach where we could ask the audience and we could ask Mike in, in real time while he's performing.

We have a, a pedal, he could indicate when he feels like he's flowing.

And then we have kind of our secret weapon, um, which is, uh, Mike's longtime producer and sound engineer, Jared Slomoff, um, whose job is to find those moments of musical articulation that are amazing, that are the flow.

And with s- with this three-pronged approach, we could then say, "Okay, this part of the song is flow for Mike," or, "This part of the song is flow for the whole band." Um, and then once we've defined that behavior, we can look back at the brain states.

Is musical flow state different from...... flow in other activities like sports, for example?