Creativity and the Brain by Rex Jung

Many people associate creativity solely with the arts, dance and music, but it is actually everywhere: in science, medicine, astronomy, etc. This fascinating video describes some scientific studies and tests which have the purpose to understand what creativity is, what happens in human brain when people think creatively and how to become more creative.

The first part of the video deals with the concept of insight, which is an important aspect of imagination. The ability to think in a novel way has always been one of the defining features of the human species. Professor Jonathan Schooler and his crew organized some mind games and simple sets of puzzles to test how moments of insights come along. One of these games involved a number of word clues which should help people to solve a problem. Half of these clues were given to the left hemisphere of the brain (commonly associated with logical thinking and language), the other half to the right hemisphere (linked to special awareness and intuition). With this test, Schooler wanted to find out which of the two hemispheres is heavily involved in generating insight. He noted that, when information as flashed to the right visual field, it went immediately to the right hemisphere and vice versa. The result showed that right hemisphere is more sensitive to the hints, thus it is more likely to make the necessary connection that leads to a sudden flash of insight.

The tools of today’s neuroscience enable scientists to see what happens within the brain when it has an insight. Mark Beeman is one of the pioneers of cognitive neuroscience and has found a systematic way to induce lots of insights. He gives three words and asks what other word goes with these all. What he wants to see is if the cor...

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...ferently and more creatively, one should also change one’s habits.

In the last part of the video, Rex Jung claims that the best way to come up with new, creative ideas is to occupy the body with mindless, easy tasks while the mind remains free to wonder. While one wonders, Jung has discovered, something changes in the frontal lobe, leading the brain to a temporary sleep mode, which he called transient hypofrontality. In this state, ideas are able to flow more freely. Some people, for example musicians, are naturally hypofrontal and, for this reason, they are more creative.

For centuries, creativity was considered off limits and too eluded to be studied, while now we have the tools to explore it. Certainly, scientists are still far away from the complete understanding of creativity, but, in the meantime, everybody has different ways to become a little more creative.