Associate Professor Donna Rose Addis (Psychology) delivered the most recent lectures of “The Creative Process” course, which focused on creativity and the brain.
Associate Professor Addis began by identifying some of the challenges for neuroscientists wanting to study creative thinking, include defining what actually constitutes “creative thinking”. Novelty is clearly a key factor, but an idea can be novel in many ways: for instance, is it new and original only to the individual, or original to the whole society?
A common misconception is that neuroscientists are trying to find a particular ‘hotspot’ in the brain where creativity takes place. However, Associate Professor Addis says that the actual question posed tends to be more complex:
“Can we differentiate creative from non-creative thinking at the neural level in a way that tells us something about the types of cognitive processes (information processing steps) that underlie particular types of creativity?”
Associate Professor Addis outlined two quite distinct forms of thinking that are important to studies of the cognitive processes underlying creative thinking. “Divergent thinking” means coming up with a wide range of possible ideas in response to a stimulus. In contrast, “convergent thinking” involves narrowing down that range of possibilities to reach a single conclusion.
“Combinational creativity” draws on both of these types of thinking. Ideas are generated using divergent thinking, then evaluated according to convergent thinking criteria (is it original? is it meaningful? is it useful?) and narrowed down to create a ‘product’ (whether an idea or object) that is a novel combination of pre-existing ideas or objects. “Exploratory creativity” involves making something completely new, but within the existing realm of current human knowledge. “Transformational creativity” is the kind of creativity of major scientific breakthroughs, where thinking breaks the boundaries of existing paradigms (for instance, recognising that the Earth circles the sun, rather than the sun circling Earth.)
Neuroscientists have various methods for assessing neural activity. These include pharmacological studies (looking at how drugs affect brain function), computational models (making computer simulations of thinking processes), and patient studies (assessing people who have suffered brain injury or disease to see how cognition is affected).
Modern brain scanning technology – such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) –allows scientists to watch brain activity in real time. Increased brain activity requires increased amounts of oxygen. Because the haemoglobin cells that carry oxygen also contain iron, the magnetic imaging can track those cells, showing how brain activity changes as the subject engages in creative and non-creative tasks.
There are some issues with this method. Practically, fMRI scanning requires the subject to be completely immobile inside a constricting tube, limiting the activities they can undertake, and how they can communicate their thoughts. Tests also require the subject to be ‘creative’ on cue while in a large, noisy, sterile machine – hardly the ideal creative environment! Multiple tests, involving regular switching between creative and non-creative thinking tasks, are needed to give comprehensive data for accurate conclusions. Researchers need to be creative themselves to design experiments that work within these constraints.
Nevertheless, fMRI technology has debunked many myths about the creative brain. A key finding is that being ‘in the zone’ or relaxed is not necessary for creative thought. Additionally, fMRI scans show that the WHOLE brain – not just the right hemisphere or prefrontal cortex – is involved in creative thinking.
Memory and imagination also use multiple areas of the brain. Memory is constructive: past events are stored in different parts of the brain – across what is termed the ‘default network’ – and remembering involves accessing those different pieces of information and reintegrating them into a coherent memory of the event. fMRI illustrates that ‘projections’ of future events involve activity in these same parts of the brain. In other words, imagining the future relies on accessing information stored about the past.
The hippocampus, one part of the default network, stores ‘episodic memory’ of experienced events. As we age, the hippocampus deteriorates, leading to less vivid memories and a reduced capacity to imagine the future. People with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia that affect the hippocampus may find themselves unable to think beyond the present, and become effectively “marooned in the moment”. As the disease progresses, other regions of the brain will atrophy, potentially causing issues with things like speech and visuospatial perception.
Visual perception is important to creativity because drawing on images is a key to imaginative construction. Damage to the visual processing regions affects people’s divergent thinking ability. Perhaps more obviously, it can affect visual skills: artists may lose their creative capacity and be unable to represent what is in front of them. However, ironically there are examples of patients with primary progressive aphasia whose artistic abilities are actually enhanced – the hypothesis is that the disease damages other areas of the brain that usually suppress the visual regions. Associate Professor Addis wrapped up her intensive and intriguing lectures with some visual examples to illustrate both decline and improvement in different cases.
After this sixth lecture, there is a two week hiatus for the University’s mid-semester break. “The Creative Process” course will resume in mid-September. The next lecture will be about Creativity and Performance, and will be delivered by the University’s Head of Drama, Dr. Emma Willis.
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