BackgroundCreativity is a high-level cognitive process characterized by contextually significant generation of new ideas. Music improvisation is part of the set of complex creative behaviours. It requires sudden elaboration of music components such as melody, harmony or rhythm. Music improvisation, from a music therapy perspective, is a technique that is widely used with different populations understanding that any person could perform such a creative act. In that sense, music improvisation is a real time ability that all people own. Despite its wide use in music therapy little is known about the direct incidence of musical improvisation in the modulation of general cognitive processes such as affective memory, among others. However, research in music-therapeutic improvisation, particularly from the neuropsychological point of view, is relatively incipient.AimThis study aims to investigate the effect of musical improvisation, as a music-therapeutic technique, on visual emotional memory of young adults with or without musical training.MethodOne hundred and thirty seven people (59% female; 55% musicians participants), between the ages of 18 and 40, participated in this study, from different educational institutions and musical bands, randomly assigned to three different conditions (improvisation, Imitation and silence), with an inter-subject design. Thirty-six images were selected from the IAPS (International Affective Pictures System), 24 emotionally activating (12 with positive and 12 with negative valence) and 12 with neutral. Firstly, participants had to observe the images and to rated (11 point scale) how emotional the images were for them. Then, they were exposed to a three-minute experimental treatment (musical improvisation) or the control conditions (no sound stimuli or imitation condition). Free recall and recognition was then evaluated, both immediate and deferred (after a week).ResultsSubjects in Improvisation condition achieved the significant highest scores both in deferred free recall task and in immediate and deferred recognition tasks, while subjects in Imitation condition obtained the lowest significant scores in immediate free recall and deferred recognition tasks in emotional pictures.Although none of the post-treatment tests yielded significant differences between musicians and non-musicians, musicians considered the images in the previous observation significantly more arousing than non-musicians.ConclusionsThese results reinforce previous evidence showing that playing music would be more effective in improving certain cognitive functions than merely listening to it. However, the data here emphasize that it is not the same to perform in an improvised way that to adjust the performance to a model. Because music improvisation modulates emotional memory, music treatment may provide a simple, safe and effective method of preventing the potentially harmful physiological concomitants of memory impairment.