Creativity and the Brain

The Most Creative Brains

By Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide

There is no single look of creativity because there are different types - creative approaches to solutions may involve the generation of novel ideas or associations, new perceptual insights, or unique strategies for problem solving. But in this latest paper, one can't help noticing that the right side of the brain keeps popping up in different testing situations.

In a recent study, researchers looked at the brains of test subjects after they were asked to generate creative stories based on a list of random words. Their answers were judged on the extent of their creativity, the fMRI correlations were made. The figure on top shows a comparison between the most creative and least creative answerers. The most creative storytellers it seems, were better at activating their right prefrontal cortices.



This is interesting because the right prefrontal cortex is an area we already know to be important for novelty-based learning and multisensory experience (sight, touch, imagery...) So maybe we should be incorporating more of these activities in our day-to-day experiences, classrooms, and the workplace?