Creativity is a complex process which requires the activation of several brain areas. So far it is not entirely clear whether creativity requires a specific neural architecture or not. Cognitive neuroscientist Roger Beaty’s research team at Harvard University appears to have found differences in the brains of highly creative people.
Their investigations revealed three neural networks with strong connections involved in the creativity process in the parietal and prefrontal cortices. This study has begun to identify controlled thought processes and spontaneous ideas. Everything seems to indicate that creativity in a person could be predictable from the strength of their neural connections in these three networks.
According to this study, creativity or creative thinking would involve three different neural networks that would work at the same time. They are the following.
The default or default neural network
It is the one involved in the imagination processes, in daydreaming or when our mind wanders without an object of attention. It is distributed in the medial area of the temporal, parietal and prefrontal lobes. It seems that it could play a fundamental role in the generation of ideas and possible solutions for their execution.
The executive control network
It is linked to the evaluation of ideas in order to determine if they fit the creative objective. It is a set of regions that are activated when we need to control thought processes or focus our attention Includes the anterior cingulate gyrus. It appears to provide important connections between components of the attentional process.
This network acts as a alternating mechanism between default networks and executive control networks
Keys to understanding creativity
It is possible that creative people are able to simultaneously activate these brain systems that do not normally work together. Although the keys to understanding the creativity process do not seem to lie only in large-scale neural networks.
Our brain orders the stimuli we receive through our senses in what we could call “information blocks”. Every time we receive new information, new neural networks are created that are immediately related to the existing information. We thus create mental models from which we can easily extract the information necessary to resolve questions that may arise later.
The problem is that, although they are very useful for solving tasks without much prior analysis, some of these blocks become so rigid that they are very difficult to modify. Basically what creativity does is challenge those rigid neural networks and give rise to creative and imaginative thinking.
The creative personality
Researchers such as Mayers or Taylor proposed certain traits of creative personality. The most creative individuals use divergent thinking, that is, several solutions to the same problem. They are intrinsically motivated and tolerate ambiguity and risk better, rather than functioning more automatically.
On the other hand, creative subjects They are less interested in the practical aspects of life They tend to have a good sense of humor and generally respond better to disorder. In addition to seeing things from the same point of view as other people, they also see things differently. They can work on several things at the same time and are very curious.
The latest research is yielding fascinating results regarding the creativity process. Despite this, even today this question has no answer. We are beginning to get an idea of the neurological basis of this process, and it seems that the creative brain it’s wired differently but we still don’t know why.
More research is needed in the future to determine whether these neural networks are fixed or whether the mind can be trained to become creative. From various sectors it is proposed that creative writing, training in art or music could modify neural connections. However, for now, the question remains open.
