The brain of creative people works the same way
An international team of psychologists found that people capable of original thinking, the processes in the brain occur on a similar principle.
Creative people like artists and scientists sometimes face a crisis of ideas. Method which helps to generate new ideas, for each person, but the processes occurring in the brain at the time, a person manifests a creative ability, as it turned out, not as an individual.
An international team of psychologists from the universities of Austria and China under the leadership of Roger Beaty of Harvard University conducted a series of experiments in which was studied the neuronal activity of creative people.
In the experiment, the volunteers were in the scanner, who took pictures of brain activity, while they expressed the original thought.
The participants were shown the image of the object, and within 12 seconds they had to come up with the most unusual method of its application.
Their responses were evaluated by three independent experts.
One of the main obstacles to creative thinking, the ease with which come to mind banal thoughts that don’t manage to get rid of. So, when participants were asked to think of an innovative use of socks, a less creative person replied “put them on your feet”, and more creative proposed to use them for water filtration.
The degree of creativity in the ideas scientists have identified two groups — the most and least creative participants, and found within both groups, clear patterns of brain activity.
People with bright and creative abilities, there is a strong connection between the three neural networks of the brain.
The first of these networks responsible for spontaneous thoughts and “wandering” of the mind, the second is activated when the person focuses on their thoughts, and the third helps to understand that more deserves our attention. The first two networks compete with each other, inhibiting the activity of each other. However, a CT scan of the brain showed that creative people are better able to use them at the same time.
Research is ongoing, and in the second phase, the scientists intend to understand how different brain activity during different creative tasks, for example in art and in science, and whether it is possible to develop the creative abilities.