The Devil Is in the Details: Why the Answer to Most Questions About Creativity Will Always Be “It Depends”

“Creativity” is an abstract concept. To make progress, creativity research needs to think about creativity in more concrete ways.     

Unrealistic representations of “the self”: A cognitive neuroscience assessment of anosognosia for memory deficit

Three cognitive components may play a crucial role in both memory awareness and in anosognosia for memory deficit (AMD): (1) a personal data base (PDB), i.e., a memory store that contains “semantic” representations about the self, (2) monitoring processes (MPs) and (3) an explicit evaluation system (EES), or comparator, that assesses and binds the representations stored in the PDB with information obtained from the environment.We compared both the behavior and the functional connectivity (as assessed by resting-state fMRI) of AMD patients with aware patients and healthy controls. We found that AMD is associated with an impoverished PDB, while MPs are necessary to successfully update the PDB.AMD was associated with reduced functional connectivity within both the default-mode network and in a network that includes the left lateral temporal cortex, the hippocampus and the insula. The reduced connectivity between the hippocampus and the insular cortex was correlated with AMD severity.     

Search and rescue operation in flooded areas: A survey on emerging sensor networking-enabled IoT-oriented technologies and applications

The climate and weather dynamics in the past few years has driven a massive increase in the number and intensity of flood disasters, which severely claim casualties in human, goods and properties. Aimed to reduce these casualties, emerging software-defined internet protocol-based communication technologies in the form of Internet of Things (IoT) have attracted strong interests from disaster mitigation stakeholders to rapidly locate victims and acquire their relevant information, which in turn can boost up the efficiency and effectiveness of Search and Rescue (SAR) missions. In order to capture state-of-the-art development and technological challenges, this paper presents an extensive review on the flood SAR systems, highlighting some of the key emerging IoT technologies that prove or are potentially useful in improving the SAR operation by the rescuers. Furthermore, a comprehensive study on different existing communication technologies for SAR is provided, covering the system architecture, communication network compositions and applications. Based on the critical analysis of existing works, this paper puts forward a proposal on an IoT-aided integrated flood management framework to support SAR in the flood-catchment areas, leveraging upon three-domain (ground, water and air) collaborative wireless networks.     

Creative thinking and brain network development in schoolchildren

Fostering creative minds has always been a premise to ensure adaptation to new challenges of human civilization. While some alternative educational settings (i.e., Montessori) were shown to nurture creative skills, it is unknown how they impact underlying brain mechanisms across the school years. This study assessed creative thinking and resting-state functional connectivity via fMRI in 75 children (4–18 y.o.) enrolled either in Montessori or traditional schools. We found that pedagogy significantly influenced creative performance and underlying brain networks. Replicating past work, Montessori-schooled children showed higher scores on creative thinking tests. Using static functional connectivity analysis, we found that Montessori-schooled children showed decreased within-network functional connectivity of the salience network. Moreover, using dynamic functional connectivity, we found that traditionally-schooled children spent more time in a brain state characterized by high intra-default mode network connectivity. These findings suggest that pedagogy may influence brain networks relevant to creative thinking—particularly the default and salience networks. Further research is needed, like a longitudinal study, to verify these results given the implications for educational practitioners. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWV_5o8wB5g .

Research Highlights

• Most executive jobs are prospected to be obsolete within several decades, so creative skills are seen as essential for the near future.
• School experience has been shown to play a role in creativity development, however, the underlying brain mechanisms remained under-investigated yet.
• Seventy-five 4–18 years-old children, from Montessori or traditional schools, performed a creativity task at the behavioral level, and a 6-min resting-state MR scan.
• We uniquely report preliminary evidence for the impact of pedagogy on functional brain networks.