The neuroscientific study of creativity began in earnest half a century ago with the founding of the field of neuroscience and the development of the first tools to measure brain-related activity. Over the ensuing decades, tremendous advances have been made in our understanding of how various neural structures and circuits underpin different psychological functions. This opinion paper presents an overview of what we know about human creativity thus far from adopting a physiology-based approach, and, in doing so, describes three broad insights that can be inferred from the existing body of evidence. First, the dynamic and heterogenous engagement of multiple brain networks during creative thinking necessarily reflects both interindividual and intraindividual differences in the ideation process. Second, compared to other psychological functions, creativity is a relatively disorder-resistant capacity of the human brain. And third, creative arts-based practices have neuroprotective effects and serve as effective intervention tools for neurorehabilitation.

The parsimony principle, or Occam's razor, holds that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is often one that offers its best or most likely account. When it comes to explanations for the brain basis of creativity, the most dominant one in contemporary times emphasizes the key role played by the default mode network (DMN), where dynamic interactions between the DMN and other brain networks, particularly the executive cognition network (ECN), are proposed to facilitate creative ideation. In this opinion paper, I argue that while DMN-ECN brain dynamics appear to offer the simplest explanation (and therefore, to follow Occam's dictum, the most likely explanation) for the brain basis for creativity, to reach such a conclusion is not warranted because of fundamental weaknesses inherent in the evidence at hand. Three major concerns in this field of research include vast variability in scoring methodology across studies, the imposition of blanket interpretations and conclusions despite heterogeneous findings, and the failure to account for or even acknowledge individuality in the study of the creative process. The veneer of narrative simplicity, then, is a result of glossing over differences, ignoring the internal perspective of the creating individual, and overlooking evidence that runs contrary to the dominant explanation. This is Occam's razor misapplied.

Importance Creativity is important for problem solving, adaptation to a changing environment, and innovation. Neuroimaging studies seeking to map creativity have yielded conflicting results, and studies of patients with brain disease have reported both decreases and paradoxical increases in creativity, leaving the neural basis of creativity unclear. Objective To investigate the brain circuit underlying creativity and assess its association with brain injury and neurodegenerative disease. Design, Setting, and Participants This study examined neuroimaging coordinates from a meta-analysis of 36 studies published between 2004 and 2019 associated with increased activity during creative tasks in healthy participants. A validated method termed coordinate network mapping and a database of resting-state functional connectivity from 1000 healthy individuals were used to test whether these coordinates mapped to a common brain circuit. Specificity was assessed through comparison to random coordinates and coordinates from working memory tasks in healthy participants. Reproducibility was assessed using an independent dataset of coordinates from additional studies of creativity in healthy participants. Finally, alignment with effects of focal brain damage on creativity was tested using data from patients with brain lesions and coordinates of brain atrophy from 7 different neurodegenerative disorders. Main Outcomes and Measures The primary outcomes were creativity or no creativity and alignment with a creativity circuit or no alignment. Results Creativity tasks activated heterogenous locations, with coordinates scattered across many different brain regions (415 coordinates derived from 857 healthy participants; pooled mean [SD] age, 24.1 [6.91] years; 461 [54%] female). However, these activation coordinates were part of a common brain circuit, defined by negative connectivity to the right frontal pole. This result was consistent across creative domains, reproducible in an independent dataset (383 coordinates derived from 691 participants) and specific to creativity when compared with random gray matter coordinates (n = 415) or coordinates activated by working memory tasks (3072 coordinates derived from 2900 healthy participants). Damage to this creativity circuit by lesions (n = 56 patients) or neurodegenerative disease (2262 coordinates derived from 4804 patients) aligned with both decreases and increases in creativity observed in these disorders. Conclusions and Relevance Findings from this study suggest that brain regions activated by creativity tasks map to a brain circuit defined by negative functional connectivity to the right frontal pole. Damage to this circuit aligned with changes in creativity observed in individuals with certain brain diseases, including paradoxical creativity increases.

The underpinnings of intergroup dynamics, particularly in relation to outgroup antipathy, have been systematically examined from psychological and sociocultural perspectives. In this paper, I make a case for the added consideration of imagination-based factors in our explanations of the foundations that give rise to outgroup-directed hate and discrimination. The proposal is an application of the BLINCS model, which holds that our implicit understanding of the reality-fiction distinction is rooted in the inherent features of fictional narratives, namely that they are bounded, inference-light, curated, and sparse. I propose that intergroup hate derives in part from our propensity to render the stories about our outgroups to be more akin to fiction than to reality.

A wide array of scholarship has revealed the somewhat paradoxical relationship between creativity and mental health. On the one hand, substantial evidence demonstrates that certain forms of mental illness are associated with enhanced creativity. On the other hand, considerable evidence also confirms that engagement in creative pursuits improves wellbeing. In this paper, we examined the associations between creative potential, the pursuit of creative hobbies, wellbeing, and schizotypy in young people aged 16–22 years. Frequentist and Bayesian approaches revealed that a higher degree of disorganized schizotypal traits was associated with greater ideational fluency and more engagement in creative hobbies, and that a higher degree of interpersonal schizotypal traits was associated with lower wellbeing. The potential drivers of this dynamic association are discussed in this paper.

This paper outlines five key points of reflection when considering the computability of human creativity. The first are problems in relation to defining creativity (how to compute that which is insufficiently operationalised). The second pertains to the seemingly unavoidable confusions that routinely transpire when equating product with process in creativity (similar looking products can be generated by wholly dissimilar processes). The third involves coming to terms with the fact that human creativity is far more than creative cognition (our desires and drives shape the direction and intensity of our creative pursuits). The fourth points to the inherent features of variability, flexibility, and individuality when it comes to human creative expression (no two people follow an identical path to creative expression). The fifth and final consideration is probably the most remarkable in that physiological shortcomings do not eliminate human creativity (we can be creative with very little).

The "standard definition" of creativity holds that a creative idea is one that is novel and useful. This judgement is customarily based on an external frame of reference as it is passed by people who are receiving the idea (the recipient). The internal frame of reference of the person who has generated the idea (the creator) is usually ignored. I make two cases in this paper. First, that employing external frames of reference in assessing creative products has been erroneously applied to understand the creative mind. Second, that any definition of creativity needs to be one that can be reasonably applied whether following an internal frame of reference of the creative experience or an external frame of reference of the creative product. With these aims in mind, I propose the following amendment to the definition of creativity: a creative idea is one that is both novel and satisfying.

People are inundated with readily accessible entertainment media choices. Recommender systems are frequently utilized to support people's media selection and engagement. The psychological factors that influence people's engagement with recommender systems and entertainment content is an under-explored area. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study where users’ explicit experiences of audiovisual media services (e.g., Netflix, TikTok, YouTube, HBO Max) and their recommender systems were examined through an online survey (n = 339). Thematic analysis, factor analysis, and path analysis were used to evaluate the data. The results indicate that (1) recommender systems influence users’ emotions and media use, (2) people prefer personalized compared to generic recommendation lists, (3) the temporal length of recommended content influences people's interest, and (4) perceived utility leads to the endorsement of recommender systems and may influence users’ well-being. The findings point to wider psychological implications associated with user awareness of recommender systems.

ABSTRACTPrevious research has examined how creative potential develops during childhood and has identified peaks, slumps, and bumps during maturation. However, little is known about the causes of such changes. This study employed a longitudinal approach to assess predictors of change in creative ideation over 2 years in young people (N = 76) aged 14–20 years old at the first time point. The analysis employed frequentist and Bayesian methods to evaluate the effect of individual factors, such as openness to experience (assessed using the BFI‐10 short form), and contextual factors, such as pursuing creative hobbies (measured with a leisure questionnaire). Openness at the first time point and change in openness over time predicted change in peak originality. Engagement in creative hobbies at the first time point predicted change in fluency. The findings support the contribution of individual factors, in the form of openness to experience, and contextual factors, in the form of engagement in creative hobbies, in the development of divergent thinking abilities in mid‐adolescence and young adulthood. Altogether, this study suggests that interventions aimed at increasing time spent on creative activities and promoting openness to experience may enhance divergent thinking abilities, which are essential components of creative potential.

A nuanced, science-based understanding of the creative mind that dispels the pervasive myths we hold about the human brain—but also uncovers the truth at their cores. What is the relationship between creativity and madness? Creativity and intelligence? Do psychedelics truly enhance creativity? How should we understand the left and right hemispheres of the brain? Is the left brain, in fact, the seat of reasoning and the right brain the seat of creativity? These are just some of the questions Anna Abraham, a renowned expert of human creativity and the imagination, explores in The Creative Brain, a fascinating deep dive into the origins of the seven most common beliefs about the human brain. Rather than endorse or debunk these myths, Abraham traces them back to their origins to explain just how they started and why they spread—and what at their core is the truth. Drawing on theoretical and empirical work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, Abraham offers an examination of human creativity that reveals the true complexity underlying our conventional beliefs about the brain. The chapters in the book explore the myth of the right brain as the hemisphere responsible for creativity; the relationship between madness and creativity, psychedelics and creativity, atypical brains and creativity, and intelligence and creativity; the various functions of dopamine; and lastly, the default mode revolution, which theorized that the brain regions most likely to be involved in the creative process are those areas of the brain that are most active during rest or mind-wandering. An accessible and engaging read, The Creative Brain gets to the heart of how our creative minds work and why some people are more creative than others, offering illuminating insights into what on its surface seems to be an endlessly magical phenomenon.

The purpose of this study was to identify the dominant research themes that have been explored in relation to creativity since the advent of academic publication in the field of psychology as well as the prevalence of trends in how the investigation of these themes has varied across the decades. Topic modeling methods of latent Dirichlet allocation and structural topic model were employed for this purpose. All abstracts containing the word "creativity" or "creative" in the PsycInfo database were thematically analyzed by examining the co-occurrences of words across this data corpus. Eleven distinct themes were identified following the analysis of over 35,000 abstracts that were published between 1894 and 2022 using this technique. The findings of this study facilitate a clearer understanding of the expanse of creativity research in terms of its relevance to multiple areas of study within the discipline of psychology. A big picture view of the field thereby also emerges as the study allows a historical perspective on the trajectory of creativity research while concurrently enabling a contemporary lens to be applied in interpreting current developments.

People have access to varied entertainment choices through online audiovisual media. Uses and Gratification Theory postulates viewers as active participants in their entertainment selection who watch media for a variety of reasons. Both hedonic and eudaimonic motivations drive user engagement. This paper focuses on how users’ implicit psychological factors (e.g., curiosity, need for affect) influence their motivations for watching online audiovisual media (n = 339). We employed multiple regression to examine predictors of eudaimonic and hedonic motivations alongside information, social interaction, and entertainment uses. The results indicate (1) people's awareness of AI recommender systems does not influence their media engagement, (2) people's need for affect underlies all types of media engagement, and (3) the effect of people's curiosity on their media engagement motivations were dimension-specific (i.e., dependent on the subtype). Our findings are in line with entertainment gratification models and reveal curiosity's unique role in people's motivations for audiovisual entertainment.

Evidence suggesting that episodic specificity induction improves divergent thinking performance in younger and older adults has been taken as indicative of the role of declarative memory processes in creativity. A series of studies were carried out to verify the specificity of such findings by investigating the effects of several novel episodic and semantic memory induction procedures on a widely employed measure of divergent creative thinking (the Alternate Uses Task), in comparison to a control induction and a no-induction baseline in both younger and older adults. There was no clear evidence for a specific role played by the induction of episodic or semantic memory processes in facilitating creative thinking across the three experiments, and the effects of the induction procedures (episodic, semantic and control) on divergent thinking were not comparable across age groups. On the other hand, higher levels of creativity were generally associated with older adults (60–80 years). In Experiments 2 and 3, older adults generated a greater number of responses (fluency), more unique responses (average originality, peak originality, creativity ratings) and more varied responses (flexibility) than younger adults (18–30 years). The findings are discussed in relation to the specificity of declarative memory operations and their impact on creative thinking, especially within the context of healthy ageing.

To attain a better grasp of the dynamics underlying the creative process, it is necessary to take the 'context' of ideation into account. The contexts that accompany creative ideation differ considerably both across and within domains. Within the realms of artistic creativities, which are closely allied to design creativities, contextual factors include (a) the temporal duration of the creative process, (b) degree of isolation/sociality involved across all stages of the creative process from the inception of the idea to the reception of the artwork, and (c) the inherent voluntary/involuntary nature of the accessibility of the artwork. Considering the importance of the context of creative ideation is therefore essential to arrive at a comprehensive and accurate understanding of creativities in practice.(c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The human ability to tell apart reality from fiction is intriguing. Through a range of media, such as novels and movies, we are able to readily engage in fictional worlds and experience alternative realities. Yet even when we are completely immersed and emotionally engaged within these worlds, we have little difficulty in leaving the fictional landscapes and getting back to the day-to-day of our own world. How are we able to do this? How do we acquire our understanding of our real world? How is this similar to and different from the development of our knowledge of fictional worlds? In exploring these questions, this article makes the case for a novel multilevel explanation (called BLINCS) of our implicit understanding of the reality–fiction distinction, namely that it is derived from the fact that the worlds of fiction, relative to reality, are bounded, inference-light, curated, and sparse.

IntroductionCollaborative care is considered a best practice in mental health care delivery and has recently been applied in high-performance sport to address athletes' mental health needs. However, how the collaborative process unfolds in practice in the sport setting has not yet been well documented. The purpose of this illustrative case study was to investigate a novel interdisciplinary approach used within the Canadian Centre for Mental Health and Sport (CCMHS) to provide mental health care to clients. Focusing on 'how' the approach was implemented, the aim of the study was to provide insight into the collaboration that occurred between mental performance and mental health practitioners to provide care to a high-performance athlete over an 11-month period, as well as factors facilitating and impeding the team's collaboration. The case involved three practitioners and a 16-year-old female athlete experiencing chronic pain, low mood, and elevated anxiety. MethodsIn the first phase of the data collection process, each practitioner engaged in guided reflective journaling to describe the case and reflect on their practice and outcomes. During the second phase, practitioners co-created a case timeline to describe the collaborative process using clinical documents. Lastly, practitioners participated in collaborative reflection to collectively reflect more broadly on collaboration practice occurring within the CCMHS and Canadian sport system. ResultsThe data depict a complex care process in which the necessity and intensity of collaboration was primarily driven by the client's symptoms and needs. A content analysis showed that collaboration was facilitated by the CCMHS' secure online platform and tools, as well as individual practitioner and team characteristics. Collaboration was, however, hindered by logistical challenges, overlapping scopes of practice, and client characteristics. DiscussionOverall, there were more perceived benefits than drawbacks to providing collaborative care. While flexibility was required during the process, deliberate and systematic planning helped to ensure success. Factors such as interdependence of collaborative practice, complementarity of practice within care teams, compensation for collaboration, in-person versus virtual delivery, and intricacies of care coordination should be further examined in the future to optimize collaborative mental health care in sport.

The development of creativity in young children has been studied extensively, but relatively few studies have examined the period of adolescence and emerging adulthood in relation to creative potential. The present study employs a combination of frequentist and Bayesian analyses to evaluate the impact of individual factors (e.g., IQ) and contextual factors (e.g., pursuit of creative hobbies) on creative ideation in three cohorts of young people aged 14-20 years. Measures of divergent thinking, specifically the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) and the Overcoming Knowledge Constraints Task, were used to this end. Openness to aesthetic and imaginative experience was the strongest predictor of creative potential for the three AUT measures. Moreover, Bayesian hypothesis testing revealed that the best predictive model for AUT ideational fluency and AUT overall originality was one that included only Openness, whereas the best predictive model for AUT peak originality, or the propensity to generate highly original responses, included Openness, as well as IQ and Engagement in Creative Hobbies. No group differences in creative potential were found between the three age cohorts (aged 14-15, 16-17, and 18-20). The study not only confirms the importance of openness to aesthetic and imaginative experience as a predictor of creative potential in adolescents and young adults, but also indicates the necessity to consider the combined and differentiated impact of individual and contextual factors in different facets of creative ideation.

Abstract Background The relationship between wellbeing and personality has been studied extensively, but few studies have examined these in the period of adolescence and emerging adulthood. Moreover, the influence of contextual factors such as engagement in leisure activities are rarely considered. Methods The present study employs a combination of frequentist and Bayesian analyses to evaluate the concurrent impact of personality traits and leisure activities on five conceptions of wellbeing (life satisfaction; positive affect; negative affect; mental health; flourishing) in three cohorts of young people (aged 14–15; 16–17; 18–20 years). Results Personality traits were the only significant predictors of life satisfaction and negative affect, but leisure activities in the form of socialising or physical activity, in addition to personality traits, predicted positive affect, mental health and flourishing. Neuroticism was the largest predictor of wellbeing overall, whereas conscientiousness was the most consistent. Lower levels of wellbeing were also associated with higher levels of creative potential. Conclusions The study not only confirms the importance of personality traits as predictors of wellbeing in adolescents and young adults, but also indicates the necessity to consider the impact of leisure activities in different conceptions of wellbeing. The negative relationship between creative potential and wellbeing is in line with the literature which shows a link between mental illness, particularly at subclinical levels, and creativity.

Book Review| April 01 2021 The Ingredients of the Creative Mind Creativity: The Human Brain in the Age of Innovation, By Elkhonon Goldberg. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018. 296 pp. Hardcover, $29.95. Anna Abraham Anna Abraham School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett University, City Campus CL919, Leeds LS1 3HE, England, E-mail: a.g.abraham@leedsbeckett.ac.uk Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The American Journal of Psychology (2021) 134 (1): 107–110. https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.134.1.0107 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Anna Abraham; The Ingredients of the Creative Mind. The American Journal of Psychology 1 January 2021; 134 (1): 107–110. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.134.1.0107 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressThe American Journal of Psychology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2021 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.