Intelligence in creative processes: An EEG study

Verbal-analytical rather than visuo-spatial Raven's puzzle solving favors Raven's-like puzzle generation

Raven's advanced progressive matrices (APM) comprise two types of representational codes, namely visuo-spatial and verbal-analytical, that are used to solve APM puzzles. Studies using analytical, behavioral, and imaging methods have supported the multidimensional perspectives of APM puzzles. The visuo-spatial code is expected to recruit operations more responsive to the visual perception tasks. In contrast, the verbal-analytical code is expected to use operations more responsive to the logical reasoning task and may entail different cognitive strategies. Acknowledging different representational codes used in APM puzzle-solving is critical for a better understanding of APM's performance and their relationship with other tasks, especially creative reasoning. We used the eye-tracking method to investigate the role of two representational codes, visuo-spatial and verbal-analytical, in strategies involved in solving APM puzzles and in generating an APM-like puzzle by using a creative-reasoning task (CRT). Participants took longer time to complete the verbal-analytical than visuo-spatial puzzles. In addition, visuo-analytical than visual-spatial puzzles showed higher progressive and regressive saccade counts, suggesting the use of more response elimination than constructive matching strategies employed while solving verbal-analytical than visuo-spatial puzzles. We observed higher CRT scores when it followed verbal-analytical (Mdn = 84) than visuo-spatial (Mdn = 73) APM puzzles, suggesting puzzle-solving specific strategies affect puzzle-creating task performance. The advantage of verbal-analytical over visuo-spatial puzzle-solving has been discussed in light of shared cognitive processing between APM puzzle-solving and APM-like puzzle-creating task performance.

Functional EEG Alpha Activation Patterns During Malevolent Creativity

On the dark side of creativity, creative ideation is intentionally used to damage others. This first EEG study on malevolent creativity investigated task-related power (TRP) changes in the alpha band while n = 89 participants (52 women, 37 men) generated original ideas for revenge in the psychometric Malevolent Creativity Test. TRP changes were assessed for different stages of the idea generation process and linked to performance indicators of malevolent creativity. This study revealed three crucial findings: 1) Malevolent creativity yielded topographically distinct alpha power increases similar to conventional creative ideation. 2) Time-related activity changes during malevolent creative ideation were reflected in early prefrontal and mid-stage temporal alpha power increases in individuals with higher malevolent creativity performance. This performance-related, time-sensitive pattern of TRP changes during malevolent creativity may reflect early conceptual expansion from prosocial to antisocial perspectives, and subsequent inhibition of dominant semantic associations in favor of novel revenge ideas. 3) The observed, right-lateralized alpha power increases over the entire ideation phase may denote an additional emotional load of creative ideation. Our study highlights the seminal role of EEG alpha oscillations as a biomarker for creativity, also when creative processes operate in a malevolent context.

Creativity across the lifespan: changes with age and with dementia

BACKGROUND

It is well known that older age is associated with losses in cognitive functioning. Less is known about the extent to which creativity is changing with age or dementia. Aim of the current study was to gain more insights into psychometric aspects of creativity in younger and older people as well as people with dementia.

METHOD

Our sample comprised three groups, (1) participants between age 18-30 years (n = 24), (2) participants 65 + years without cognitive impairment (n = 24), and (3) participants 65 + years with cognitive impairment / dementia (n = 23). Cognitive abilities were assessed via the Standard Progressive Matrices Test (SPM), Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test (MoCa), and Trail Making Test (TMT). Creativity was assessed via the Creative Reasoning Task (CRT), Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP), and Alternate Uses Task (AUT).

RESULTS

Compared to younger people, older people scored significantly lower in only two out of eleven creativity sub-scores (one in the CRT and one in the TCT-DP). Performance in the SPM was significantly associated with these two sub-scores and age. Cognitively impaired older people had significantly lower scores in the creativity task AUT compared to cognitively healthy older people and younger people. The associations between MoCa and AUT scores were also significant.

CONCLUSION

Creativity appears relatively stable in older age, with exception of those creativity skills that are affected by abstract reasoning (SPM), which appear susceptible to aging. As our findings suggest, cognitive impairment in older age might impair only some aspects of creativity with other creativity aspects being comparable to cognitively healthy people. The age-related and the cognitive status-related effects seem to be independent. The preserved creative abilities can be used in dementia care programs.

How does experimentally induced pain affect creative ideation and underlying attention-related psychophysiological mechanisms?

While the adverse effect of chronic pain on attention and more complex cognitive abilities is well documented, the findings for experimentally induced pain are inconsistent. These inconsistencies could be attributable to sufficient attentional resources and/or compensatory mechanisms in individuals experiencing experimentally induced pain that are not observable at the behavioral level but could be revealed by psychophysiological measures such as the electroencephalography (EEG). With the current study, we aimed to investigate whether experimentally induced pain affects creative ideation in an adaptation of the Alternate Uses Task (AUT). Performance in the AUT was compared between 39 females in a pain group and 37 females in a pain-free group. While solving the task, EEG was recorded to measure the degree of internally directed attention assessed by means of task-related power (TRP) changes in the upper alpha-frequency band. The results revealed that the pain group and the pain-free group did not differ in AUT performance at the behavioral level. However, TRP increases in the upper alpha band at right (vs. left) temporal, parietal, and occipital electrode sites were significantly more pronounced in the pain group compared to the pain-free group. These results indicate that individuals in the pain group allocated more attention to internal mental processes during creative ideation than individuals in the pain-free group. The necessary inhibition of pain might have caused this additional activation so that the pain group performed similarly well on the behavioral level as the pain-free group.

Everyday Creativity is Associated with Increased Frontal Electroencephalography Alpha Activity During Creative Ideation

Everyday creativity is the basic ability of human survival and penetrates every aspect of life. Nevertheless, the neural mechanisms underlying everyday creativity was largely unexplored. In this study, seventy-five participants completed the creative behaviour inventory, a tool for assessing creative behaviour in daily life. The participants also completed the alternate uses task (AUT) during an electroencephalography (EEG) assessment to evaluate creative thinking. Alpha power was used to quantify neural oscillations during the creative process, while alpha coherence was used to quantify information communication between frontal regions and other sites during creative ideation. Moreover, these two task-related quantitative measures were combined to investigate the relationship between individual differences in everyday creativity and EEG alpha activity during creative idea generation. Compared with the reference period, increased alpha power was observed in the frontal cortex of the right hemisphere and increased functional coupling was observed between frontal and parietal/temporal regions during the activation period. Interestingly, individual differences in everyday creativity were associated with distinct patterns of EEG alpha activity. Specifically, individuals with higher everyday creativity had increased alpha power in the frontal cortex, and increased changes in coherence in frontal-temporal regions of the right hemisphere while performing the AUT. It might indicate that individuals with higher everyday creativity had an enhanced ability to focus on internal information processing and control bottom-up stimuli, as well as better selection of novel semantic information when performing creative ideation tasks.

Design and implementation of an EEG-based recognition mechanism for the openness trait of the Big Five

The differentiation between the openness and other dimensions of the Big Five personality model indicates that it is necessary to design a specific paradigm as a supplement to the Big Five recognition. The present study examined the relationship between one's openness trait of the Big Five model and the task-related power change of upper alpha band (10–12 Hz). We found that individuals from the high openness group displayed a stronger alpha synchronization over a frontal area in symbolic reasoning task, while the reverse applied in the deductive reasoning task. The results indicated that these two kinds of reasoning tasks could be used as supplement of the Big Five recognition. Besides, we divided one's openness score into three levels and proposed a hybrid-SNN (Spiking Neural Networks)-ANN (Analog Neural Networks) architecture based on EEGNet to recognize one's openness level, named Spike-EEGNet. The recognition accuracy of the two tasks was 90.6 and 92.2%. This result was highly significant for the validation of using a model with hybrid-SNN-ANN architecture for EEG-based openness trait recognition.

More creative ideas are associated with increased right posterior power and frontal-parietal/occipital coupling in the upper alpha band: A within-subjects study

The neurophysiological investigation of creative idea generation is a growing research area. EEG studies congruently reported the sensitivity of upper alpha power (10-12 Hz) for the creative ideation process and its outcome. However, the majority of studies were between-subject design studies and research directly comparing the neurophysiological activation pattern when generating more and less creative ideas within a person are rare. Therefore, the present study was specifically focused on investigating brain activation patterns associated with the generation of more vs. less creative ideas. We applied an alternate uses task (AU-task; i.e., finding original uses for everyday objects such as a brick) in a sample of 74 participants and recorded the brain activation during the AU-task and reference period. A portable EEG system with 21 dry electrodes arranged in the international 10-20 system and linked ear as reference was used. We found a higher increase of upper alpha power during creative ideation (relative to reference period, i.e., task-related power, TRP) over right posterior sites when people generated more compared to less creative ideas. This was accompanied by an increase of functional coupling (i.e., task-related coherence increase) between frontal and parietal/occipital sites, which suggests higher internal attention and more control over sensory processes. Taken together, these findings complement the existing creativity research literature and indicate the importance of alpha power for the creative ideation process also within people.

Divergent thinking in Italian elementary school children: the key role of probabilistic reasoning style

Divergent thinking is widely recognised as an individual creative potential and an essential factor in fostering creativity since the early stages of life. Albeit previous research revealed that creativity could be pursued through controlled mental processes (e.g. reasoning), the debate about the impact of children's reasoning on divergent thinking and, ultimately, creativity is still open. The present study sought to deepen the relationships between probabilistic reasoning and divergent thinking in a sample of 106 Italian children (mean_age = 8.64, SD_age = 1.34; 58 F). The Beads Task was used to evaluate probabilistic reasoning, whereas the Alternative Uses Task was administered to assess divergent thinking. Results revealed that analytical, slow, and effortful forms of thought underpinned by high probabilistic competencies predict children's divergent production. These findings suggest that a higher score for divergence of thinking depends on a high involvement of reasoning style, which in this study relies on the ability to make probabilistic decisions in ambiguous situations. Future research directions were discussed.

Interactive Association of Negative Creative Thinking and Malevolent Creative Thinking

With the existing research available on negative and malevolent creativity, this paper proposes a more narrowly defined concept: the bi-directional relationship between negative and malevolent creative thinking, which is intended to clarify the way forward for research in the area of negative and malevolent creativity. This paper uses qualitative research to identify and correlate an individual's concept of negative and malevolent creativity and uses a Inductive reasoning methodology to outline a preliminary theory. Following this, the preliminary theory was returned to the primary sources for validation, continuous optimization, and presentation. To better demonstrate the bidirectional linkage mechanism of thinking between the two types, this paper constructed a model to describe the relationships between the variables. This study concludes that negative creative thinking is a kind of native thinking based on personal interests that are developed to emphasize the benefits of an individual's interests, while malevolent creative thinking is a kind of native thinking based on the value-added of personal interests and is deliberately harmful. Both types of thinking share a value orientation, environmental stimulation, and subjective motivation. However, they differ in terms of value goals, ways of thinking, and the scale of the subject. It is concluded from the intrinsic thinking logic of individual thinking as well as the temporal dimension of the individual creative process that value-added and intentions to exploit others are factors that drive the transformation of negative creative thinking into malevolent creative thinking, and personal intention is a vital factor for establishing a linkage between negative and malevolent creative thinking.

Ecological Momentary Assessment of Creative Ideation

Abstract. Creative ideas in daily life show substantial variation in quality. Yet, most studies investigate the creative ideation process in highly controlled laboratory contexts, which challenges the ecological validity of creativity research findings. In this article, we advocate the use of ambulatory assessments of creative ideation to gain deeper insight into the variability of ideation processes (between- and within-subjects) in everyday life. We demonstrate this approach by the example of the ambulatory battery of creativity (ABC), which constitutes a reliable and valid approach to assess divergent thinking ability in the verbal and figural domain in everyday life context. Furthermore, it differentiates between-person and within-person variation of creative ideation performance. The first part of this paper will shortly describe the general approach using ABC as an example. In the second part, we use the 7 C’s heuristic to explore applications and implications of this novel method for creativity research. We focus on four C’s with special relevance for ambulatory assessment: Creator, Creating, Context, and Curricula. To this end, we review the findings of strongly controlled laboratory studies and discuss and illustrate applications of the ambulatory assessment. We conclude that the assessment of creative ideation performance in the field might help move the spotlight of creative ideation research from the laboratory to more naturalistic settings. This would increase the ecological validity of creative ideation research and facilitate fresh or unprecedented perspectives on past and future questions on a person’s creative potential and its moment-to-moment fluctuation.

How stereotype threat affects the brain dynamics of creative thinking in female students

When people are placed in a situation where they are at risk of substantiating a negative stereotype about their social group (a scenario termed stereotype threat), the extra pressure to avoid this outcome can undermine their performance. Substantial and consistent gender disparities in STEM fields leave women vulnerable to stereotype threat, including the stereotype that women are not as good at generating creative and innovative ideas as men. We tested whether female students' creative thinking is affected by a stereotype threat by measuring power in the alpha frequency band (8-12Hz oscillations) that has been associated with better creative thinking outcomes. Counter to expectations that a stereotype threat would reduce alpha power associated with creative thinking, analyses showed increased alpha power following the introduction of the stereotype threat. This outcome suggests that women may have attempted to increase their internal attention during the task in order to disprove the stereotype. Behaviorally, this effort did not lead to changes in creative performance, suggesting that the stereotype threat decoupled alpha power from creative thinking outcomes. These results support a growing school of thought in the neuroscience of creativity literature that the alpha power often seen in conjunction with creative behavior is not necessarily related to the creativity processes themselves, but rather might be part of a larger network modulating the distribution of attentional resources more broadly.

Network oscillations imply the highest cognitive workload and lowest cognitive control during idea generation in open-ended creation tasks

Design is a ubiquitous, complex, and open-ended creation behaviour that triggers creativity. The brain dynamics underlying design is unclear, since a design process consists of many basic cognitive behaviours, such as problem understanding, idea generation, idea analysis, idea evaluation, and idea evolution. In this present study, we simulated the design process in a loosely controlled setting, aiming to quantify the design-related cognitive workload and control, identify EEG-defined large-scale brain networks, and uncover their temporal dynamics. The effectiveness of this loosely controlled setting was tested through comparing the results with validated findings available in the literature. Task-related power (TRP) analysis of delta, theta, alpha and beta frequency bands revealed that idea generation was associated with the highest cognitive workload and lowest cognitive control, compared to other design activities in the experiment, including problem understanding, idea evaluation, and self-rating. EEG microstate analysis supported this finding as microstate class C, being negatively associated with the cognitive control network, was the most prevalent in idea generation. Furthermore, EEG microstate sequence analysis demonstrated that idea generation was consistently associated with the shortest temporal correlation times concerning finite entropy rate, autoinformation function, and Hurst exponent. This finding suggests that during idea generation the interplay of functional brain networks is less restricted and the brain has more degrees of freedom in choosing the next network configuration than during other design activities. Taken together, the TRP and EEG microstate results lead to the conclusion that idea generation is associated with the highest cognitive workload and lowest cognitive control during open-ended creation task.

Creativity in an Affective Context

Abstract. Everyday life often requires considerable creativity in dealing with challenging circumstances. This implies that creativity regularly operates in an affective context, however, this “C” of creativity is rarely addressed in contemporary research. In this brief review article, we address some important milestones in this nascent field of research. Starting with early accounts on emotional creativity, we discuss seminal research intertwining creativity and mood states, and finally introduce two recent developments in this field: reappraisal inventiveness as the capacity to generate manifold cognitive reappraisals for aversive situations, and malevolent creativity as creative ideation intentionally used to damage others. We discuss the conceptual origins of reappraisal inventiveness and malevolent creativity and provide an extensive review of past behavioral and neuroscientific findings regarding these differently motivated instances of affective creativity. Additionally, novel pilot findings and prospects on both lines of research will be provided, which may help to advance investigations into more real-world applications of creative cognition.

INTELLIGENCE LEVEL MIGHT BE PREDICTED BY THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EEG SIGNALS AT SPECIFIC FREQUENCIES AND BRAIN REGIONS

The total energy the brain consumed and the intensities of information flows across different brain regions in an intellectual activity may help to explain an individual’s intelligence level. To verify this assumption, 43 students aged 18–25 were recruited as the research subjects. Their intelligence quotients (IQ) were scored by using Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), while their electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded simultaneously by using Neuroscan system. The total energy and distribution patterns of EEG signals were acquired in Curry 8.0. The intensities of information flow across different brain regions were measured by Phase Slope Index (PSI). 20 channels and 190 channel combinations were selected for data analysis. The results show that the IQ score negatively correlates to the EEG energy and positively correlates to the intensities of information flows at specific frequency bands in specific channel pairs, especially in some long distance (18–24[Formula: see text]cm) channel pairs.

EEG signals respond differently to idea generation, idea evolution and evaluation in a loosely controlled creativity experiment

Many neurocognitive studies endeavor to understand neural mechanisms of basic creative activities in strictly controlled experiments. However, little evidence is available regarding the neural mechanisms of interactions between basic activities underlying creativity in such experiments. Moreover, strictly controlled experiments might limit flexibility/freedom needed for creative exploration. Thus, this study investigated the whole-brain neuronal networks' interactions between three modes of thinking: idea generation, idea evolution, and evaluation in a loosely controlled creativity experiment. The loosely controlled creativity experiment will provide a degree of flexibility/freedom for participants to incubate creative ideas through extending response time from a few seconds to 3 min. In the experiment, participants accomplished a modified figural Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT-F) while their EEG signals were recorded. During idea generation, a participant was instructed to complete a sketch that was immediately triggered by a sketch stimulus at first sight. During idea evolution, a participant was instructed to complete a sketch that is radically distinctive from what was immediately triggered by the sketch stimulus. During the evaluation, a participant was instructed to evaluate difficulties of thinking and drawing during idea generation and evolution. It is expected that participants would use their experience to intuitively complete a sketch during idea generation while they could use more divergent and imaginative thinking to complete a possible creative sketch during idea evolution. Such an experimental design is named as a loosely controlled creativity experiment, which offers an approach to studying creativity in an ecologically valid manner. The validity of the loosely controlled creativity experiment could be verified through comparing its findings on phenomena that have been effectively studied by validated experimental research. It was found from our experiment that alpha power decreased significantly from rest to the three modes of thinking. These findings are consistent with that from visual creativity research based on event-related (de)synchronization (ERD/ERS) and task-related power changes (TRP). Specifically, in the lower alpha band (8-10 Hz), the decreases of alpha power were significantly lower over almost the entire scalp during idea evolution compared to the other modes of thinking. This finding indicated that idea evolution requires less general attention demands than the other two modes of thinking since the lower alpha ERD has been reported as being more likely to reflect general task demands such as attentional processes. In the upper alpha band (10-12 Hz), the decreases of alpha power were significantly higher over central sites during the evaluation compared to idea evolution. This finding indicated that evaluation involves more task-specific demands since the upper alpha ERD has been found as being more likely to reflect task-specific demands such as memory and intelligence, as was defined in the literature. In addition, new findings were obtained since the loosely controlled creativity experiment could activate multiple brain networks to accomplish the tasks involving the three modes of thinking. EEG microstate analysis was used to structure the unstructured EEG data to detect the activation of multiple brain networks. Combined EEG-fMRI and EEG source localization studies have indicated that EEG microstate classes are closely associated with the resting-state network as identified using fMRI. It was found that the default mode network was more active during idea evolution compared to the other two modes of thinking, while the cognitive control network was more active during the evaluation compared to the other two modes of thinking. This finding indicated that idea evolution might be more associated with unconscious and internal directed attention processes. Taken together, the loosely controlled creativity experiment with the support of EEG microstate analysis appears to offer an effective approach to investigating the real-world complex creativity activity.

What Does Creativity Mean in Safety-Critical Environments?

Safety in high-risk and time-pressured situations relies on people's ability to generate new and appropriate solutions to solve unforeseen problems for which no procedures or rules are available. This type of ability is regularly associated with the concept of creativity. While psychology researchers have studied, for decades, how creative ideas and solutions are generated, this basic research has not made it into the more applied fields of human factors and neuroergonomics. Building on the research on the psychology and the neuropsychology of creativity, this paper will (1) address the question of what creativity means and what are its ties with problem solving and decision-making; (2) focus on the evidence of the creative processes, the underlying mechanisms, and the multiple psychological dimensions of the creative behavior involved in unexpected events in extreme environments such as Apollo 13 mission, United Airline Flight 232, and Mann Gulch wildfire; and (3) explore the implications for future research in the domains of neuroergonomics and differential psychology.

Creativity is associated with a characteristic U-shaped function of alpha power changes accompanied by an early increase in functional coupling

Although there exists increasing knowledge about brain correlates underlying creative ideation in general, the specific neurocognitive mechanisms implicated in different stages of the creative thinking process are still under-researched. Some recent EEG studies suggested that alpha power during creative ideation varies as a function of time, with the highest levels of alpha power after stimulus onset and at the end of the creative thinking process. The main aim of the present study was to replicate and extend this finding by applying an individual differences approach, and by investigating functional coupling between long distance cortical sites during the process of creative ideation. Eighty-six participants performed the Alternate Uses (AU) task during EEG assessment. Results revealed that more original people showed increased alpha power after stimulus onset and before finalizing the process of idea generation. This U-shaped alpha power pattern was accompanied by an early increase in functional communication between frontal and parietal-occipital sites during the creative thinking process, putatively indicating activation of top-down executive control processes. Participants with lower originality showed no significant time-related variation in alpha power and a delayed increase in long distance functional communication. These findings are in line with dual process models of creative ideation and support the idea that increased alpha power at the beginning of the creative ideation process may indicate more associative modes of thinking and memory processes, while the alpha increases at later stages may indicate executive control processes, associated with idea elaboration/evaluation.

Humor comprehension and creative cognition: Shared and distinct neurocognitive mechanisms as indicated by EEG alpha activity

Humor comprehension is increasingly recognized as showing parallels to more conventional creative cognition; yet our understanding of brain mechanisms underlying creative cognition in a humorous context is still limited. The present study addressed this issue by investigating functional patterns of EEG alpha activity while 93 participants viewed nonverbal humorous cartoons until they indicated having recognized the punch line, and subsequently vocalized their idea as to what constituted it. In a similar fashion, EEG was also assessed during performance of the Alternate Uses Task (AUT), in order to identify similarities and differences in EEG alpha activity implicated in conventional creative cognition vs. humor comprehension. Analyses revealed a pattern of robust task-related alpha power increases in both tasks, which were markedly more right-lateralized at ventral fronto-temporal sites in the humor task as compared to the AUT. Findings are interpreted in line with recent literature on the functional role of alpha activity in the creativity domain. Altogether, this study adds further evidence to the particular role of EEG alpha oscillations in creative cognition and supports the idea that conventional creative ideation and the comprehension of humor share neural mechanisms affiliated to creative cognition.

Functional coupling of brain networks during creative idea generation and elaboration in the figural domain

The neuroscientific investigation of creative cognition has advanced by considering the functional connectivity between brain regions and its dynamic changes over time, which are consistent with stages in the ideation process. Surprisingly, although the communication between neuronal networks takes place in a time-scale of milliseconds, EEG studies investigating a time-course in cortico-cortical communication during creative ideation are rare and findings are typically restricted to the verbal domain. Therefore, this study examined functional coupling using EEG (task-related phase-locking in the upper-alpha range) during creative thinking in the figural domain. Using an innovative computerized experimental paradigm, we specifically investigated the stage of idea generation and the stage of idea elaboration in an adapted picture completion task. The findings confirmed a hypothesized increase of functional coupling from idea generation to elaboration, which was most pronounced in frontal-central as well as frontal-temporal networks. The connectivity in the frontal-parietal/occipital network already increased during idea generation and remained constant during elaboration. Importantly, more original participants generally showed higher functional connectivity in all brain networks. This elevated functional coupling with frontal brain regions might reflect increased executive processes related to internal attention, motor planning, and semantic selection processes supporting highly original thought in the figural domain.

The creative thinking cognitive process influenced by acute stress in humans: an electroencephalography study

This study examined the underlying neural mechanism of acute stress affecting creative thinking. Twenty-six male participants underwent the Alternative Uses Test before and after acute stress test (Montreal Imaging Stress Task). Compared to before stress, stressed participants responded with higher salivary cortisol and salivary alpha-amylase. The electroencephalogram results indicated a general decrease in upper-frequency alpha power after stress, compared with that of before stress. The decrease in upper-frequency alpha power observed in the first stage after exposure to stress was related to memory and attention. Additionally, stress also reduced the differences between individuals with different creative abilities. In summary, these findings indicated that acute stress impaired creative thinking and primarily affected the earlier phase of the process of creative cognition. This study provides some practical implications for educational practice and corporate innovation in that a more relaxed environment promotes creative output. Lay Summary Acute stress impaired creative thinking performance and mainly affects the earlier phase of the process of creative cognition. Additionally, stress seems to reduce the differences between individuals with different creative abilities.

Problem Space Matters: Evaluation of a German Enrichment Program for Gifted Children

We studied the development of cognitive abilities related to intelligence and creativity (N = 48, 6–10 years old), using a longitudinal design (over one school year), in order to evaluate an Enrichment Program for gifted primary school children initiated by the government of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Entdeckertag Rheinland Pfalz, Germany; ET; Day of Discoverers). A group of German primary school children (N = 24), identified earlier as intellectually gifted and selected to join the ET program was compared to a gender-, class- and IQ- matched group of control children that did not participate in this program. All participants performed the Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) test, which measures intelligence in well-defined problem space; the Creative Reasoning Task (CRT), which measures intelligence in ill-defined problem space; and the test of creative thinking-drawing production (TCT-DP), which measures creativity, also in ill-defined problem space. Results revealed that problem space matters: the ET program is effective only for the improvement of intelligence operating in well-defined problem space. An effect was found for intelligence as measured by SPM only, but neither for intelligence operating in ill-defined problem space (CRT) nor for creativity (TCT-DP). This suggests that, depending on the type of problem spaces presented, different cognitive abilities are elicited in the same child. Therefore, enrichment programs for gifted, but also for children attending traditional schools, should provide opportunities to develop cognitive abilities related to intelligence, operating in both well- and ill-defined problem spaces, and to creativity in a parallel, using an interactive approach.

EEG alpha activity during imagining creative moves in soccer decision-making situations

This study investigated task-related changes of EEG alpha power while participants were imagining creative moves in soccer decision-making situations. After presenting brief video clips of a soccer scene, participants had to imagine themselves as the acting player and to think either of a creative/original or an obvious/conventional move (control condition) that might lead to a goal. Performance of the soccer task generally elicited comparatively strong alpha power decreases at parietal and occipital sites, indicating high visuospatial processing demands. This power decrease was less pronounced in the creative vs. control condition, reflecting a more internally oriented state of information processing characterized by more imaginative mental simulation rather than stimulus-driven bottom-up processing. In addition, more creative task performance in the soccer task was associated with stronger alpha desynchronization at left cortical sites, most prominently over motor related areas. This finding suggests that individuals who generated more creative moves were more intensively engaged in processes related to movement imagery. Unlike the domain-specific creativity measure, individual's trait creative potential, as assessed by a psychometric creativity test, was globally positively associated with alpha power at all cortical sites. In investigating creative processes implicated in complex creative behavior involving more ecologically valid demands, this study showed that thinking creatively in soccer decision-making situations recruits specific brain networks supporting processes related to visuospatial attention and movement imagery, while the relative increase in alpha power in more creative conditions and in individuals with higher creative potential might reflect a pattern relevant across different creativity domains.

Neural correlates of serial order effect in verbal divergent thinking

During the course of divergent thinking (DT), the number of generated ideas decreases while the originality of ideas increases. This phenomenon is labeled as serial order effect in DT. The present study investigated whether different executive processes (i.e., updating, shifting, and inhibition) specifically contribute to the serial order effect in DT. Participants' executive functions were measured by corresponding experimental tasks outside of the EEG lab. They were required to generate original uses of conventional objects (alternative uses task) during EEG recording. The behavioral results revealed that the originality of ideas was higher in later stage of DT (i.e., Epoch 2) than in its earlier stage (i.e., Epoch 1) for higher-shifting individuals, but showed no difference between two epochs for lower-shifting individuals. The EEG results revealed that lower-inhibition individuals showed stronger upper alpha (10-13Hz) synchronization in left frontal areas during Epoch 1 compared to during Epoch 2. For higher-inhibition individuals, no changes in upper alpha activity from Epoch 1 to Epoch 2 were found. These findings indicated that shifting and inhibition contributed to create a serial order effect in DT, perhaps because individuals suppress interference from obvious ideas and switch to new idea categories during DT, thus more original ideas appear as time passes by.

Creative ways to well-being: Reappraisal inventiveness in the context of anger-evoking situations

Neuroscientific studies in the field of creativity mainly focused on tasks drawing on basic verbal divergent thinking demands. This study took a step further by investigating brain mechanisms in response to other types of creative behavior, involving more "real-life" creativity demands in the context of emotion regulation and well-being. Specifically, functional patterns of EEG alpha activity were investigated while participants were required to generate as many and as different ways as possible to reappraise presented anger-eliciting situations in a manner that reduces their anger. Cognitive reappraisal involves some of the same cognitive processes as in conventional verbal creativity tasks, inasmuch as it requires an individual to inhibit or disengage from an emotional event, to shift attention between different perspectives, and to flexibly adopt new solutions. To examine whether alpha oscillations during cognitive reappraisal are different from those during conventional creative ideation, the EEG was also assessed during performance of the Alternative Uses task, requiring individuals to generate as many and as original uses of an object as possible. While cognitive reappraisal was associated with a similar pattern of alpha power as observed in conventional verbal creative ideation, the former yielded significantly stronger alpha power increases at prefrontal sites, along with lower alpha increases at more posterior cortical sites, indicating higher cognitive control and less spontaneous imaginative thought processes in the generation of effective strategies to regulate an ongoing negative emotional state.

Functional neuroimaging of visual creativity: a systematic review and meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION

The generation of creative visual imagery contributes to technological and scientific innovation and production of visual art. The underlying cognitive and neural processes are, however, poorly understood.

METHODS

This review synthesizes functional neuroimaging studies of visual creativity. Seven functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and 19 electroencephalography (EEG) studies were included, comprising 27 experiments and around 800 participants.

RESULTS

Activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of the fMRI studies comparing visual creativity to non-rest control tasks yielded significant clusters in thalamus, left fusiform gyrus, and right middle and inferior frontal gyri. The EEG studies revealed a tendency for decreased alpha power during visual creativity compared to baseline, but comparisons of visual creativity to non-rest control tasks revealed inconsistent findings.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings are consistent with suggested contributions to visual creativity of prefrontally mediated inhibition, evaluation, and working memory, as well as visual imagery processes. Findings are discussed in relation to prominent theories of the neural basis of creativity.