Anatomy of the Creative Brain
Explore where creativity fits in with our neuroanatomy
When Irish playwright and screenwriter Martin McDonagh went to Bruges, Belgium for a short holiday, he found himself enchanted with the beauty of a city that hasn’t changed since the Middle Ages. But after only a few hours of touring its cultural highlights, McDonagh became extremely bored.
During a DVD special features interview, the screenwriter and director said it was as if two sides of his brain were arguing within him, one side finding the city stunningly attractive, and the other side screaming boredom. From that internal quarrel came the idea of two characters, two guys, who find themselves in Bruges, one loving the city and the culture, the other hating it.
McDonagh, now driven to create a story out of this unique situation, had to figure out why these two men had to be in Bruges in the first place. Which led his thoughts to the unlikelihood of two gangsters, two hit men, in this city that isn’t known to harbor underworld characters.
For those who study the psychology of creativity (see Psychology of Creativity), the genesis of the story and McDonagh’s subsequent writing of the film exemplifies how the creative process unfolds. Associations are merged and fused into a plot that might at first appear unlikely or improbable, but because of its creative construction and excellent writing, become intriguing and gratifying for viewers.
Taking this creative thought process a step further, many neuroscientists, or those who study the neuroanatomy of creativity, also find McDonagh’s explanation of how he gave birth to this film highly applicable. McDonagh describes a type of cognition or thinking pattern that these scientists believe closely describes how creativity unfolds at the physiological level.
Individuals combine current or new ideas and events within networks of ideas and knowledge already stored within memory. In other words, individuals assimilate these new experiences into what they already know, broadening ideas and generating new combinations. The more information stored in memory, and the more cognitive flexibility an individual possesses, the better able the individual is to create new, original – highly creative - combinations.
Arthur J. Cropley, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hamburg, has studied and written extensively on how certain cognitive processes facilitate creative thinking.
He writes about these processes or mechanisms in the article “Creativity and cognition: Producing effective novelty” in the Roeper Review. When adding creativity to the cognitive processes of thinking, reasoning, and problem solving, and combining these processes with stored information, producing an effective, novel thought involves:
- Selecting from masses of information available at the moment;
- Relating new information to what is known or already stored;
- Combining elements of new and old information;
- Evaluating newly emerging combinations;
- Selectively retaining successful combinations;
- Communicating the results to others.
Cropley cites other researchers who take this cognitive framework for creativity a step further by stating that truly novel or original combinations also require highly random associations. For example, instead of placing his gangsters in a story in the usual, bigger cities of New York, Chicago, or Berlin, the screenwriter McDonagh placed his characters in the unlikely historical city of Bruges, Belgium.
Colin Farrell, one of the main characters starring in “In Bruge,” was quoted in the DVD’s special features as saying that McDonagh’s story was the most original screenplay he had ever read in addition to being the best written. The writing eventually won McDonagh a British Academy Film Award for best original screenplay.
And originality is an essential part of every definition of creativity. Since the mid 20th century, several researchers developed numerous definitions on creativity, but all include originality or novelty. Here is one definition the U.K.’s National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE):
Definition of Creativity
- Creativity is the process of generating something original - always involving imagination.
- Creativity is purposeful: it is imagination put into action toward an end.
- Creativity produces something original in relation to one’s own previous work, to a peer group or to anyone’s previous output in a particular field.
- Creativity has value in respect to its applied objective. Creativity involves not only the generation of ideas, but also the evaluation of them, and deciding which idea is the most adequate one.
The left vs. the right
The example of how McDonagh generated his screenplay exemplifies a process that many scientists believe describe a combinatory process. This theory debunks the oversimplification that all creative activity is right-brain activity, and all analytical, logical thought occurs in the left brain. Instead, these scientists define creativity as a combination of processes distributed by circuits throughout all areas of the brain.
Most researchers today realize the over-generalization that has taken place around the left-brain, right-brain phenomena. The genesis of this phenomena developed from Nobel Laureate Roger Sperry’s unprecedented research during the 1960s on split-brain patients at the California Institute of Technology.
Sperry, along with his student Michael Gazzaniga, studied epileptic patients who had undergone lateralization. This procedure separated a thick nerve running down the brain’s middle, called the corpus callosum. In the absence of a seizure disorder, both brain hemispheres effectively work together, sharing information across this nerve. However, in epileptic patients, seizures that start in one hemisphere spread across the corpus callosum to the other hemisphere, causing a grand mal seizure. (see What is Laterialization?)
Comparing apples and oranges
Although complex, the neuroscientific inquiry of creativity is amenable to the tools of cognitive psychology and the cognitive neurosciences, linking creative behavior to activity within and between brain networks. A main challenge is to avoid the many simplifications that often arise when discussing such a complex construct.
Source: “Neuroanatomy of Creativity,” Human Brain Mapp, March 2010. Rex E. Jung, PhD, University of New Mexico, and colleagues.
The Cal Tech researchers studying patients who had undergone split-brain surgeries did not intend to study creativity, or even develop creativity theories. Instead, they were trying to understand if the two sides of the brain were co-equal in purpose and function, or if a hierarchy of functions existed. This groundbreaking research gave a richer understanding of brain specialization, uncovering some correlation with creative thought and process to some areas of the right brain. Yet they did not intend for this research to become the foundation for all scientific thought on creative processes.
In a 2008 interview with Natasha Mitchell, a science journalist and host of the blog “All In The Mind,” Gazzaniga told Mitchell that the popular press inaccurately took some conclusions from the split-brain research, and inaccurately attributed all creative cognition to the right brain. It’s more likely that the right brain coordinates creative thought and processes with other brain areas through complex brain circuits that form networks.
Coordinating areas for the best combinations
Scientists who now specialize in cognitive creativity know that this complex process involves many brain areas, but begins in the prefrontal cortex. They theorize that this area of the brain serves creativity’s central processor. (see The Basics of Brain Structure).
The identification of the prefrontal cortex as a main processor resulted from rapid technological advancements over the past 20 years in neuroimaging technologies (see Neuroimaging). This technology uses electrodes, gels, and advanced magnetic imaging devices to watch and monitor the brain as it actually undertakes and completes creative tasks.
In the study, “EEG Complexity and Performance Measures of Creative Thinking,” researchers Matthias Mölle and colleagues gave participants two types of tasks to complete. They used an electroencephalograph (EEG) to measure neuronal activity as participants completed convergent and divergent types of problems. Creativity experts recognize divergent problems as involving creativity whereas convergent problems involve more memorization, and “one-right-answer” solutions. (For more information on convergent and divergent problem solving, see The Psychology of Creativity.)
The study published in Psychophysiology concluded that creative problem solving or divergent tasks created more complex neuronal activity involving more neural patterns than when convergent problem solving took place. In fact, complexity almost disappears when convergent thinking is required.
These researchers from the Medical University of Lübeck in Lübeck, Germany, stated that: “The results suggest that creative thinking is accompanied by a higher number of simultaneously activated cell assemblies than is analytical thinking.” (Cell assemblies represented units of thoughts and ideas.)
Additionally, Mölle’s study conducted in 1999 showed that the complex neuronal functioning occurred in the brain’s prefrontal cortex.
Several studies since Mölle’s affirms the major role of the prefrontal cortex. Even when other brain areas such as the limbic system and temporal lobes are involved with creativity, the frontal lobes coordinate with these areas of the brain.
Researchers stress that the frontal lobes or prefrontal cortex only provide the management of creative thought processes. In other words, the brain has a hierarchy of creative structures, and at the top of that hierarchy, similar to an organizational chart in a company, sits the prefrontal cortex.
In the article “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Creativity,” Arne Dietrich states that “no suggestion is made here that the prefrontal cortex is the seat of creativity. Rather, the prefrontal cortex contributes highly integrative computations to the conscious experience, which enables novel combinations of information to be recognized as such and then appropriately applied to works of art and science.”
Appearing in the journal Psychometric Bulletin & Review, Dietrich’s study outlines the critical importance of one structure within the prefrontal cortex essential to creativity: working memory. (see What is Memory?).
Dietrich, professor of psychology at American University of Beirut in Lebanon, proposes that working memory has a central processor or “search engine” that retrieves information from long-term memory in the temporal occipital parietal area of the brain, pulling it into the working memory buffer. The buffer then performs a process where it combines incoming information with that pulled from long-term memory, allowing new combinations to be formed.
Working memory uses cognitive flexibility to form new combinations, and cognitive flexibility is the “epitome of creativity,” according to Dietrich. This means that creative individuals have greater abilities to break conventional or obvious patterns of thinking, and thinking both conceptually and abstractly.
Dietrich also states that this highly novel form of thinking takes place both spontaneously, and when individuals perform deliberate types of creativity, such as problem solving. And, this type of information processing occurs with both cognitive and emotional data.
But “regardless of how novelty is generated initially, circuits in the prefrontal cortex perform the computation that transforms the novelty into creative behavior. To that end, prefrontal circuits are involved in making novelty fully conscious, evaluating its appropriateness, and ultimately implementing its creative expression.”
Studying creativity
If creativity intrigues you on a scientific level, you should consider a research career in neuropsychology or neuroscience. Usually a Ph.D. is required for this type of research, and a strong background in psychology is essential.
Other areas of psychology also have specialties in creativity, including: Human Growth and Development, Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology, Educational Psychology, and Media Psychology.
Contact schools offering degrees in psychology for more information.
Experience Grows Your Brain
Neuroscientists who study the brain, learning, and creativity know the importance of experience. They have studied the effects of experiences such as traveling, (see Creativity and Traveling) and learning a new language, solving a crossword puzzle, and playing video games. More specifically, they have studied the effects of these activities on the brain.
Every new, stimulating experience requires learning, and therefore changes the brain. As new sensations or ideas enter the brain, they are converted into electrical signals, signals that split off into numerous different pathways. When it’s truly a novel idea and an established pathway doesn’t exist, the brain creates one. It’s the forming of these new pathways, and the enhancement of existing ones, that makes the brain amazingly plastic. The new pathways simply connect neurons to other neurons.
Plasticity means the ability to change, which creativity and learning facilitate. And researchers tell us that these experiences are what form the brain’s circuitry. Exposure to novelty creates new circuits and synapses. While this is especially critical for the developing brains of infants and children, this process continues throughout an individual’s life. (see Childhood Developmental Psychology).
According to the Psychology Today article “Build a Better Brain” by Beth Livermore, neuroscientific investigations into how experience grows more brain circuits offers positive news to all individuals: “These findings suggest you can essentially train your brain to collate more information faster, and access it quicker an better. And under the right conditions of stimulation, you can grow yourself a brain that will keep up with your information needs – perhaps even exceed them.”
And what educators and researchers also report is that these learning experiences aren’t only the book-learning types of experiences. From getting off the plane in a foreign city, to plunging oneself into the depths of a strenuous hike in the mountains, all new experiences will make the human brain grow and develop in ways that only these experiences exact.