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。

The Impact of Different Types of Meditation on Creative Thinking and the Underlying Mechanism

Meditation practices are embedded in different cultures, worldviews, and traditions, which can be conceptualized as a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory practices, involving different attentional, cognitive monitoring, and awareness processes. A great deal of research has demonstrated that meditation is beneficial to the development of cognitive function and the improvement of the ability of emotion regulation. Meanwhile, cognitive function and positive emotion also have a crucial role in the creative performance. Although there is direct evidence that meditation helps to solve the problem creatively, and meditators have a better level of creative thinking than the control group, different types of meditation may have different effects on divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Given that regulation of attention is the central commonality across the many different meditation methods, meditation practices can be usefully classified into two main styles: concentrative meditation (CM) and mindfulness meditation (MM), depending on how the attentional processes are directed. CM entails the capacities of monitoring the focus of attention and detecting distraction, disengaging attention from the source of distraction, and redirecting and engaging attention to the intended object. MM involves an attentive set that is characterized by an open presence and a nonjudgemental awareness of sensory, cognitive, and affective fields of experience in the present moment, and relates to a higher-order awareness or observation of the ongoing mental processes. This study summarized the different effects of CM and MM on divergent thinking and convergent thinking, and explored the underlying mechanism. Previous research showed that CM groups successfully solved significantly more failed problems from the pre-test session, EEG analysis showed that the less percentage of alpha waves in CM session, which contributed to maintaining an alert and mindful state during CM, which providing direct evidence for the role of CM in promoting insight. MM has also received great attention from researchers, MM improved creativity performance on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, and yielded better emotional regulation. Meanwhile, long-term mindfulness meditators exhibit better divergent thinking scores (flexibility and fluency) using the Alternative Uses task and demonstrate a negative connection between divergent thinking and resting-state DMN activity. In addition, there are some studies compared the effects of two types of meditation on divergent thinking and convergent thinking. On the one hand, MM group usually behaved better on divergent thinking tests than CM and control group, but not convergent thinking; on the other hand, although CM group exhibit better on convergent thinking as assessed by Remote Association Task than MM group and control group, the effect is weak. The impact of meditation on creative thinking can be explained by changes in cognitive function and emotional regulation. CM exerts a positive influence on convergent thinking, primarily by focused attentional states and top-down executive control; MM induces defocused attentional states, and promotes the enhancement of cognitive flexibility and positive emotions, which contributes to divergent thinking. However, these explanations are mainly based on behavior research and theoretical discussion, which requires to deepen the brain mechanism of the effect of meditation on creativity. Furthermore, future studies should also strengthen the integration of various types of meditation and creative thinking, focusing on individual differences among meditators and comparing with other interventions.