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THE CREATIVE BRAIN IS WIRED
DIFFERENTLY
Scientists studying brain scans of people who were
asked to come up with inventive uses for everyday
objects found a specific pattern of connectivity that
correlated with the most creative responses.
Researchers were then able to use that pattern to
predict how creative other people's responses would
be based on their connections in this network. The
study is described in a January 15 (2018) paper
published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
"What this shows is that the creative brain is wired
differently," said Roger Beaty, a Post-Doctoral
Fellow in Psychology and the first author of the
study. "People who are more creative can
simultaneously engage brain networks that don't
typically work together. We also used predictive
modeling to show we could predict, with some
degree of accuracy, how creative people's ideas
were (based on brain scans) that had already been
published." Beaty and colleagues reanalyzed brain
data from previous studies and found that, by simply
measuring the strength of connections in these
peoples' brain networks, they could estimate how
original their ideas would be.
While the data showed that regions across the brain
were involved in creative thought, Beaty said the
evidence pointed to three subnetworks -- the default
mode network, the salience network and the
executive control network -- that appear to play key
roles in creative thought.
The default mode network, he said, is involved in
memory and mental simulation, so the theory is that
it plays an important role in processes like mindwandering, imagination, and spontaneous thinking.
"In terms of creativity, we think that's important for
brainstorming," Beaty said. "But you're not always
going to stumble onto the most creative idea that
way, because you might be drawn to something
unoriginal from memory, so that's when these other
networks come online."
The salience network, he said, detects important
information, both in the environment and internally.
When it comes to creativity, researchers believe it
may be responsible for sorting through the ideas that
emerge from the default mode network.
Lastly, Beaty said, the executive control network
works to help people keep their focus on useful
ideas while discarding those that aren't working.
"It's the synchrony between these systems that
seems to be important for creativity," Beaty said.
"People who think more flexibly and come up with
more creative ideas are better able to engage these
networks that don't typically work together and
bring these systems online."
To identify the brain network involved in creativity,
Beaty and colleagues recruited a total of 163
volunteers, and used functional magnetic resonance
imaging (FMRI) technology to scan their brains as
they tried to conceive of creative ideas for everyday
objects, like a brick or a knife or a rope.
The team then trained "raters" to review the
responses from participants and evaluate how
creative their ideas were.
"Creativity is typically defined as the ability to come
up with new and useful ideas," Beaty said. "We
correlated the connectivity strength in this network while they were thinking creatively with the quality
of their responses."
Based on the results of that test, Beaty and
colleagues developed a predictive model and tested
against brain scan data collected for earlier studies
on creativity.
"We used already-published data. we found that
based on how strong the connections are in this
network, we could guess pretty accurately how
creative you're going to be on a task," Beaty said.
Ultimately, Beaty said he hopes the study dispels
some myths about creativity and where it comes
from.
"One thing I hope this study does is dispel the myth
of left versus right brain in creative thinking," he
said. "This is a whole-brain endeavor."
It's also not clear that this can't be modified with
some kind of training. "It's not something where you
have it or you don't," he added. "Creativity is
complex, and we're only scratching the surface here,
so there's much more work that's needed."
Adapted from: Harvard University. Roger E. Beaty, Yoed N. Kenett,
Alexander P. Christensen, Monica D. Rosenberg, Mathias Benedek,
Qunlin Chen, Andreas Fink, Jiang Qiu, Thomas R. Kwapil, Michael J.
Kane, Paul J. Silvia, 2018, accessed in February 2020.
