Have you ever imagined how the brain works of Leonardo DaVinci, Pablo Picasso, Affandi, or other world artists?
Perhaps the artists have their own way of generating original ideas. But recent findings have revealed that what happens in the brains of creative people is not so individualized. In a recent study, scientists reported that there is a typical pattern of neural activity that marks these most creative people.
"We have identified a pattern of brain connectivity that varies between people, but if it is associated with the ability it will create creative ideas," said Roger Beaty, one of the authors of this study quoted from The Guardian, Monday (15/01/2018).
"It's not like we predict who will be the next Einstein, but we can feel well how flexible one's thinking," continued the psychologist at Harvard University.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI) to observe the volunteer brain while completing creative tasks. This fMRI machine measures blood flow between different brain areas of 163 volunteers. Initial results indicate that creative tasks activate 3 main areas of the brain, namely the initial network, the network of executive control functions, and the saliency network.
The initial network has always been associated with creativity, being responsible for tasks such as imagination, daydreaming, and spontaneous thinking. While network executive control functions are involved with cognitive functions such as memory and language. Finally, the salient network is responsible for filtering out external stimuli.
Although the three areas seem to be related to creative thinking, a stronger relationship is indicated by more blood flow around the three areas.
"You have three different systems that are in different parts of the brain, but they activate each other," said Beaty quoted from Live Science, Monday (15/01/2018).
"People who are better able to activate all three, usually have a more creative thinking," he added.
The connection between brain connections and creativity is so strong. In fact, researchers can predict how creative volunteer responses are in their tasks simply by reading their fMRI results.
In other words, creative people are actually connected in different ways. In addition, more creative people can control connections in their brains.
Unfortunately, it is unclear whether creative people appear in this way or if they often perform creative tasks then they build these connections.
"It's just as difficult as determining whether a chicken or an egg is there first, because the research is correlational," Beaty told Newsweek Wednesday edition (17/01/2018).
Currently, Beaty and his team are planning to look for similar patterns of activity in specific areas such as writing or playing music. In addition, they also want to know if brain activity can change when someone is more adept in a particular skill.