Designing EEG Neurofeedback Procedures to Enhance Open-ended versus Closed-ended Creative Potentials

Recent empirical evidence demonstrated that open-ended creativity (which refers to creativity measures that require various and numerous responses, such as divergent thinking) correlated with alpha brain wave activation, whereas closed-ended creativity (which refers to creativity measures that ask for one final correct answer, such as insight problem solving) was related to larger variability in electroencephalogram (EEG) differences between alpha and beta waves. This study designed two EEG neurofeedback procedures to examine their training effects on open- versus closed-ended creative potentials. In the alpha-enhancement condition, participants were reinforced to elevate only their alpha frequencies by auditory feedback for 10 sessions. In the alpha-transformation condition, enhancement and suppression of the signal tone (and hence, the appearance and disappearance of alpha waves) were both practiced. Pre- and posttest comparisons indicated that, compared to the active contrast condition, the alpha-enhancement practice improved only open-ended creativity performance. The alpha-transformation training enhanced closed-ended creativity performance, which was first demonstrated in the literature, and simultaneously facilitated open-ended creativity performances. In addition, changes in brain wave patterns by training positively correlated with change in predicted creativity performances. All of these results were of medium to large effect sizes. The effectiveness of these EEG neurofeedback procedures for creativity training was implied and discussed.     

Metaphors and creative thinking

This study examined how working memory plays different roles in open-ended versus closed-ended creative problem-solving processes, as represented by divergent thinking tests and insight problem-solving tasks. With respect to the analysis of different task demands and the framework of dual-process theories, the hypothesis was that the idea generation in a divergent thinking test relies more on associative, effortless system 1 processing, but insight problem solving requires rule-based, resource-limited system 2 processing, in addition to system 1 processing. Since system 1 was suggested to be more active in resource deprivation conditions, Experiment 1 adopted the dual-task paradigm, which increased participants' working memory load. The results showed that divergent thinking performance was enhanced and insight problem-solving performance was hindered. Experiment 2 using the individual differences approach found that individuals' working memory capacity correlated with insight problem solving but not with divergent thinking performance, indicating a possible involvement of system 2 processing in insight problem solving. These findings suggested that open-ended and closed-ended creative problem solving involve different processes and helped to clarify some past inconsistencies when considering the relationship of factors with creativity.     

Creative ways to well-being: Reappraisal inventiveness in the context of anger-evoking situations

Neuroscientific studies in the field of creativity mainly focused on tasks drawing on basic verbal divergent thinking demands. This study took a step further by investigating brain mechanisms in response to other types of creative behavior, involving more “real-life” creativity demands in the context of emotion regulation and well-being. Specifically, functional patterns of EEG alpha activity were investigated while participants were required to generate as many and as different ways as possible to reappraise presented anger-eliciting situations in a manner that reduces their anger. Cognitive reappraisal involves some of the same cognitive processes as in conventional verbal creativity tasks, inasmuch as it requires an individual to inhibit or disengage from an emotional event, to shift attention between different perspectives, and to flexibly adopt new solutions. To examine whether alpha oscillations during cognitive reappraisal are different from those during conventional creative ideation, the EEG was also assessed during performance of the Alternative Uses task, requiring individuals to generate as many and as original uses of an object as possible. While cognitive reappraisal was associated with a similar pattern of alpha power as observed in conventional verbal creative ideation, the former yielded significantly stronger alpha power increases at prefrontal sites, along with lower alpha increases at more posterior cortical sites, indicating higher cognitive control and less spontaneous imaginative thought processes in the generation of effective strategies to regulate an ongoing negative emotional state.     

Female and male soccer players recruited different cognitive processes when generating creative soccer moves

Previous research has indicated that in several domains, women and men may use different cognitive processes along with different neurophysiological activation to achieve similar behavioral performance. The present study extended this line of research to the novel field of soccer playing. In female and male active soccer players, we investigated patterns of brain activation and functional connectivity of brain networks during imagination of creative soccer moves, using EEG methods that are well established in creativity research. Participants were presented with scenarios taken from real soccer games. Female and male soccer players showed comparable creative performance in their imagined moves to score a goal, which was rated by top qualified experts (UEFA A licensed soccer coaches). Notwithstanding, they differed with respect to their brain activation and functional connectivity of brain networks. While men exhibited relatively higher parietal/occipital task-related EEG alpha power, women showed significantly higher within-hemisphere functional coupling in the upper alpha band. The findings add important new evidence to the field of cognitive gender research in an applied, sports-related domain of creative cognition.     

Effects of Creative Personality on EEG Alpha Oscillation: Based on the Social and General Creativity Comparative Study

The neural mechanism underlying creativity has been identified and confirmed by numerous studies. This current exploratory study compared the neural basis between social creativity and general creativity and explored the effect of creative personality on their neural basis by employing multiple regression analysis. The EEG activities of 34 participants were recorded during social or general creative tasks. The results indicated that a stronger alpha event‐related synchronization (ERS) was presented during the social creative task than during the general creative task. High creative personality individuals were found to exhibit higher event‐related desynchronization (ERD) only for the upper alpha band. Additionally, high creative personality individuals revealed no significant task differences regarding the alpha ERS. However, low creative personality individuals exhibited a stronger alpha ERS for social creative tasks than they did for general creative tasks. The current investigation could lead to new approaches for examining the brain correlates of creativity from different domains and their correlations with respect to creative personality.     

融合视角下创造力的认知神经机制

创造力的认知神经机制是近年来心理学研究领域的前沿和热点问题。通过融合创造力整体宏观视角和创造性产生过程的微观视角,对创造力的认知神经机制进行了综述。宏观视角下,创造力主要涉及α波和大脑前额叶、内外侧颞叶以及外侧顶叶; 微观视角下,在创造力产生过程中主要涉及α波序列位置效应以及默认网络和执行控制网络的功能耦合。未来研究方向应该结合多模态脑成像数据库,利用机器算法来探究创造力的本质; 关注青少年群体创造力的纵向发展趋势; 结合分子遗传学研究,探究与创造力有关的基因问题。     

创造性思维与认知抑制的关系

抑制是创造性思维过程中的一种重要的认知加工机制。创造性思维与认知抑制的关系主要有三种观点：创造性思维的认知去抑制假说、认知抑制假说和适应性认知抑制假说。本文系统评述了创造性思维与认知抑制关系的相关理论、研究新进展和神经机制。未来研究应加强创造性思维与认知抑制关系的理论整合与构建,分析创造性思维的不同阶段的认知抑制机制,采用无意抑制与有意抑制研究范式,对创造性思维与认知抑制的关系、影响因素及神经机制进行深入研究。     

Types of Creativity and Visualization in Teams of Different Educational Specialization

This research is the first to examine different types of creativity dimensions in relation to different types of visualization on a team level, by comparing adolescences’ teams of different specialization (visual artist, scientists, and humanities) during a complex creative task in an ecologically valid educational setting First, the difference between all teams’ creative outputs (drawings) was compared in terms of their visual characteristics and represented content based on parameters derived from the content analysis of visual media. Second, the teams’ creative performance was compared using evaluations of experts from different professional domains. Based on the evidence from examination of teams’ creative products (final drawings) and their evaluations by professionals, this research suggests that object visualization is related to artistic creativity and spatial visualization is related to scientific creativity on the team-level. Furthermore, the findings provide a clear indication that assessing general creativity independently of the domain, as it has been done so far in most team creativity literature, might be somewhat limited.     

不同冥想类型对创造性思维的影响及作用机制

冥想与创造性的关系正逐渐被关注,澄清冥想练习对创造性思维的影响效果和作用机制对个体创新潜能的培养与提升具有重要意义。不同冥想类型对创造性思维的影响具有特异性,专注冥想主要通过注意聚焦和提升自上而下的执行控制能力来对聚合思维产生积极影响;正念冥想引起的离焦的注意状态,以及对认知灵活性和积极情绪的促进,有助于发散思维。未来应加强不同冥想类型与创造性思维的整合研究,探讨冥想影响创造性思维的脑机制,以及冥想与其他干预训练对创造性思维的不同作用机制等。     

青少年创造性发展及其脑机制研究进展

青少年时期是创造性发展的关键阶段,探明青少年创造性发展规律及其神经机制对于培养和激发个体的创新潜能具有重要意义。本文综述了青少年创造性发展及其脑机制的研究进展,分别对青少年创造性思维发展趋势、影响因素及其相应的脑机制展开综述,并在此基础上进行了展望。总体而言,青少年时期创造性思维发展呈现出两个波峰(11~13岁,15~16岁)的发展趋势;青少年创造性发展受外部原生家庭教养方式和学校教师激励以及内部情绪动机和自我管理能力的影响较大;前额叶对青少年创造性发展具有重要作用,这可能与该脑区涉及执行控制功能有关。针对青少年创造性发展的教育干预以及大脑可塑性可能成为该领域的研究热点;而大样本纵向跟踪多模态脑影像数据库的建立可为相关研究提供重要支持。     

Working memory training: improving intelligence--changing brain activity

The main objectives of the study were: to investigate whether training on working memory (WM) could improve fluid intelligence, and to investigate the effects WM training had on neuroelectric (electroencephalography - EEG) and hemodynamic (near-infrared spectroscopy - NIRS) patterns of brain activity. In a parallel group experimental design, respondents of the working memory group after 30 h of training significantly increased performance on all tests of fluid intelligence. By contrast, respondents of the active control group (participating in a 30-h communication training course) showed no improvements in performance. The influence of WM training on patterns of neuroelectric brain activity was most pronounced in the theta and alpha bands. Theta and lower-1 alpha band synchronization was accompanied by increased lower-2 and upper alpha desynchronization. The hemodynamic patterns of brain activity after the training changed from higher right hemispheric activation to a balanced activity of both frontal areas. The neuroelectric as well as hemodynamic patterns of brain activity suggest that the training influenced WM maintenance functions as well as processes directed by the central executive. The changes in upper alpha band desynchronization could further indicate that processes related to long term memory were also influenced.     

Necessity is the mother of invention: avoidance motivation stimulates creativity through cognitive effort

Compared with approach motivation, avoidance motivation has often been related to reduced creativity because it evokes a relatively inflexible processing style. This finding seems inconsistent with the dual pathway to creativity model, which poses that both flexible and persistent processing styles can result in creative output. Reconciling these inconsistencies, the authors hypothesized that avoidance-motivated individuals are not unable to be creative, but they have to compensate for their inflexible processing style by effortful and controlled processing. Results of 5 experiments revealed that when individuals are avoidance motivated, they can be as creative as when they are approach motivated, but only when creativity is functional for goal achievement, motivating them to exert the extra effort (Experiments 1-4). The authors found that approach motivation was associated with cognitive flexibility and avoidance motivation with cognitive persistence (Experiment 1), that creative tasks are perceived to be more difficult by avoidance- than by approach-motivated individuals, and that avoidance-motivated individuals felt more depleted after creative performance (Experiment 2a, 2b, and 3). Finally, creative performance of avoidance-motivated individuals suffered more from a load on working memory (Study 4). The present results suggest that for people focusing on avoiding negative outcomes, creative performance is difficult and depleting, and they only pay these high cognitive costs when creativity helps achieving their goals.     

Conceptual Combinations and Subsequent Creativity

Conceptual combination has been advocated as an important component of creativity, but relatively little research has investigated its importance. Two experiments were designed to extend previous research on the relationship between performance on conceptual combination tasks and subsequent performance on creativity tasks. Both experiments involved the generation of category exemplars and manipulated the type of conceptual combination experience and whether the items presented were related or unrelated to one another. In the first experiment, this was followed by a brainstorming task (divergent thinking) and in the second experiment by a creative problem solving task (convergent thinking). Contrary to expectations, the condition that required conceptual combinations did not enhance the generation of the number and originality of exemplars. As predicted, exposure to unrelated items led to more original products than related ones. The conceptual combination task with related items was predictive of performance on the creative problem solving task but not the divergent thinking task. Performance on the divergent task was related to the generation of exemplars for unrelated items. These results suggest that the conceptual combination task taps creative problem solving rather than divergent creativity.     

The Importance of the Default Mode Network in Creativity—A Structural MRI Study

Anecdotal reports as well as behavioral studies have suggested that creative performance benefits from unconscious processes. So far, however, little is known about how creative ideas arise from the brain. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the neural correlates of creativity by means of structural MRI research. Given that unconscious and less controlled processes are important in creative thinking, structural brain research may find a positive correlation between well‐established creativity measures and cortical thickness in brain structures of the default mode network (i.e., the counterpart of the cognitive control network). Individuals performed the Alternative Uses task by which an individual's cognitive flexibility and the average uniqueness and average creativity of a participant's ideas were assessed. We computed optimized voxel‐based‐morphometry (VBM) to explore the correlation between inter‐individual differences in creativity and inter‐individual differences in gray matter volume. For all creativity measures, a positive correlation was found between creative performance and gray matter volume of the default mode network. These findings support the idea that the default mode network is important in creativity, and provide neurostructural support for the idea that unconscious forms of information processing are important in creativity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

工作记忆容量对创造性思维的预测

创造性思维(CT)是人类高级认知的重要组成部分,而工作记忆容量(WMC)是个体认知功能的重要指标,对于WMC能否预测CT存在不同的观点。本文先从正向预测、负向预测和不能预测的角度分类总结了相关研究证据,然后用游乐园模型(APT)、双通道模型(DPCM)和注意控制理论(CAT)对不同结果进行解释,分析了以往研究可能存在的问题,包括测量WMC和测量CT的任务类型不匹配、测量CT的领域特殊性问题、忽略其他认知能力差异以及未考虑智力、人格等因素对二者关系的影响等。最后,结合已有问题与当前的研究重点对未来研究进行了相应的展望。     

Creative self‐efficacy as mediator between creative mindsets and creative problem‐solving

An emerging area of research is how one's mindset regarding the fixedness and malleability of creative ability relates to creative performance. Malleable creative mindsets tend to be positively related to creativity while fixed mindsets often show a negative association. Similarly, creative self‐efficacy, or one's beliefs that they have the capacity to be creative, is also related to creative performance and creative mindsets. While previous studies tested the direct relationship between mindsets and creativity, this study tested creative self‐efficacy in this relationship. A total of 152 students from a Midwestern university participated in the study. They were provided with measures of creative self‐efficacy, creative mindsets, and creative problem‐solving. Solutions were assessed in terms of quality and originality. Results indicated that both malleable creative mindsets and creative self‐efficacy were positively related to solution quality and originality while fixed creative mindsets were negatively related. Mediation analysis using Preacher and Hayes' (2004) bootstrapping macro showed that creative self‐efficacy mediated the relationship between malleable mindsets and quality and originality as well as the relationship between fixed mindsets and quality and originality. This research advances the study of creativity by demonstrating that creative self‐efficacy is an important mechanism through which creative mindsets relate to creative performance.     

应激影响创造力的神经生理机制

人类的很多创造性活动都在一定程度的应激状态下完成,探讨应激与创造力之间的关系成为当前的一个研究焦点。本文从神经内分泌的新视角,梳理了多巴胺、去甲肾上腺素与创造力之间的关系,以及二者在应激影响创造性认知加工过程中的内在神经调节机制,力图揭示应激如何通过神经递质调节大脑神经反应进而对创造力产生影响。未来研究应该综合运用多模态手段,继续探索HPA轴在应激影响创造力中的中介作用机制,并从神经内分泌系统动态平衡机制的视角构建神经科学分子水平-脑网络-行为的综合框架。     

EEG alpha asymmetry and creativity

Results of 3 experiments examining the relationship between creativity and left-hemisphere and right-hemisphere EEG activity are reported. Creativity has been hypothesized to involve the use of primary-process cognition, and such cognition is hypothetically accompanied by activation of the right cerebral hemisphere. In light of these hypotheses, we predicted that highly-creative people should exhibit greater right-hemisphere than left-hemisphere EEG activity during creative performance and that this pattern would not be found in less-creative people. All 3 experiments supported this prediction. This difference in asymmetry was specific to creative performance. It was not present during basal recordings or during a non-creative task.     

Creativity and schizotypy from the neuroscience perspective

Behavioral research has revealed that some cognitive features may be similar between creative and psychotic/schizophrenic-like thoughts. In this study, we addressed the potential link between creativity and schizotypy at the level of the brain by investigating functional patterns of brain activity (using functional magnetic resonance imaging) during creative cognition in preselected groups with low versus high psychometrically determined schizotypy. Our findings revealed an association between the originality component of creativity and reduced deactivation of right parietal brain regions and the precuneus during creative cognition, congruent with the idea that more-creative people may include many more events/stimuli in their mental processes than do less-creative people. Similarly, the high-schizotypy group showed weaker deactivation of the right precuneus during creative cognition. The fact that originality and schizotypy show similar functional brain activity patterns during creative ideation (i.e., reduced deactivation of the right precuneus) strongly supports the contention that similar mental processes may be implicated in creativity and in psychosis proneness.     

Authoritarianism and arranged marriage in Bangladesh and Korea

The relationships between authoritarianism and attitudes about arranged marriage were studied in Bangladesh and Korea. According to regression analyses (N = 417), authoritarianism was positively related to support for arranged marriages in closed-ended and open-ended responses. Authoritarianism was also negatively related to open-ended discussions about the importance of love in selecting a partner and in the importance of emotional connection in establishing a relationship. Replicating prior results from the US on women, authoritarianism was related to desires to marry individuals who were gender-typed, traditional, and with narrow interests. Despite some differences in patterns of relationships due to gender and country of origin, the findings support the general hypothesis that authoritarians are invested in maintaining the traditions of their culture.