The neuroscience of creativity: are creative geniuses born or made?

JULIE HOEFLINGER

Stroke of genius

On an unsuspecting day in 1985, Alfred Schnittke, a famous 20th century Russian composer, suffered from a potentially career-ending stroke. Strokes can be devastating to cognitive functioning as they temporarily cut off blood supply to the brain causing tissue death. This can result in numerous debilitating deficits including paralysis and depression, all of which can severely interfere with day-to-day life.

However, Schnittke reported something completely inexplicable following his injury: he insisted that the stroke had amplified his creativity. In fact, Schnittke became more prolific than ever, composing works that would become some of the most celebrated pieces of classical music during his time.

There are myriad similar cases in which writers, musicians, and artists of all kinds continue to produce creative works following brain injury, as well as non-artists who picked up a newfound interest in the arts following brain injury. Emergent creative talent has been well documented in age-related degenerative brain diseases, particularly frontotemporal dementia, which is a form of dementia that predominantly impacts behavior and language. However, understanding what parts of the brain are involved in the processes underlying creativity remains elusive.

Many of us have been led to believe that some people are born “right-brained,” or more creative, and others are born “leftbrained,” or more analytical, and this limiting belief still lingers in public discourse today. But if creative spurts can occur later in life, especially after brain damage has occurred, then the notion that creative ability is written into the blueprint of our genes is implausible.

What is creativity?

It’s difficult to study creativity if we don’t have a grasp on exactly what it means. Although the definition varies and has shifted considerably over the years, a consistently agreed upon characteristic is novelty. This is the primary defining characteristic of a creative idea: the idea must be new in some way. A “novel” or “original” idea is defined as something that you don’t come across frequently or ever.

But just because something is new does not make it creative. There must be context to this newness; it can’t be completely random. Therefore, another factor of creativity is an idea’s “appropriateness, relevance, or fit,”. In other words, it must be useful, meaningful, or valuable in some way.

To build on our definition of creativity, something is deemed creative if it “is a novel work that is accepted as… useful or satisfying by a group in some point in time”. However, there is much debate about whether these two criteria are sufficient in labeling something as vague as creativity. Regardless, the consensus is that creativity is generating something that is fresh and meaningful in some way.

Where is creativity found in the brain?

Tracking creativity in the brain is no easy task. Early studies pointed to the idea that the right hemisphere of the brain is more involved in creative tasks, thus engendering the myth of being “left-brained” or “right-brained.” Other early studies looked for differences in the size of specific brain regions and how regions with increased size might play more of a role in creativity. But the idea that something as subjective and poorly defined as creativity could be localized to one brain region is misguided.

It’s more likely that an orchestration of large neural networks spanning several brain regions are involved in producing creativity. Recent studies have found that creativity is more strongly linked with personality traits such as openness to experience and emotional intelligence than with particular brain areas. According to a comprehensive review on creativity research, numerous studies have “demonstrated that openness of experience robustly predicted individual creative thinking and creative achievement”. In fact, openness to experience seems to be the most important predictor of creativity.

Despite all of this, critics argue that research on creativity up until this point is inherently flawed because it can’t be reliably measured or defined, and thus meaningful conclusions cannot be drawn from the data.

Where does that leave us? Do creative people truly have different brains than non-creative people?

Researchers studying creativity are now pointing to the concept of “creative potential.” This shifts the conversation from creativity as something that is genetic or fixed to something that can be developed as one would develop skills for anything from a sport to an instrument. One recent study on creativity asserts, “Creative potential exists in everyone, and individual differences are reflected in a matter of degree of high or low creative potential, rather than all-or-nothing creative potential. Creative potential is not exclusive to geniuses or scientists. Everyone has creative potential”.

How to train your creativity?

What are some safe ways to strengthen creative ability that don’t involve brain damage? One of the safest ways to foster creativity also happens to be the easiest: go to sleep.

Research reveals that REM sleep, or the state of sleep in which most dreaming occurs, seems to increase creative problem solving. “Creative thought relies on the reorganization of existing knowledge,” one study explains. “The high excitation, plasticity, and connectivity of REM sleep provide an ideal setting for the formation of novel, unexpected, connections” between neurons in the brain.

To harness the power of your dreams, Balder Onarheim, founder of the Copenhagen Institute of NeuroCreativity, recommends actively thinking of the problem you’re trying to solve right before going to sleep. Some people also tout that keeping a dream journal nearby can aid in the development of more creative ideas.

In addition to dreaming, walking also seems to aid creativity. A study conducted at Stanford University found that a short walk on a treadmill resulted in a significant boost in creative thinking.

Finally, since openness is so crucial to being creative, this may be an area of improvement on which to focus. Our brains are extremely flexible in that they are constantly reorganizing and adapting to new input, thus becoming more open to new experiences is something that can more or less be learned like anything else.

While we may never fully track down the phenomenon of how creativity is produced in the brain, we’ve learned that creative ability is not reserved exclusively for artists and savants, and it’s not something that one is born with or without. The embers of creativity reside within all of us and can be ignited with continued practice.

BORROWING FROM A FAKE YUCHEN LIU

LEFT, WITH INCENSE; RIGHT, WITHOUT INCENSE