Elements of creative thought: Investigating the cognitive and neural correlates of association and bi-association processes

Creative thinking relies on the ability to make remote associations and fruitfully combine unrelated concepts. Hence, original associations and bi-associations (i.e., associations to one and two concepts, respectively) are considered elementary cognitive processes of creative cognition. In this work, we investigated the cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying these association processes with tasks that asked for original associations to either one or two adjective stimuli. Study 1 showed that the generation of more original associations and bi-associations was related to several indicators of creativity, corroborating the validity of these association performances as basic processes underlying creative cognition. Study 2 assessed brain activity during performance of these association tasks by means of fMRI. The generation of original versus common associations was related to higher activation in bilateral lingual gyri suggesting that cued search for remote representatives of given properties are supported by visually-mediated search strategies. Parametric analyses further showed that the generation of more original associations involved activation of the left inferior frontal cortex and the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which are consistently implicated in constrained retrieval and evaluation processes, and relevant for making distant semantic connections. Finally, the generation of original bi-associations involved higher activation in bilateral hippocampus and inferior parietal lobe, indicating that conceptual combination recruits episodic simulation processes. Together, these findings suggest that the generation of verbally cued, original associations relies not only on verbal semantic memory but involves mental imagery and episodic simulation, offering new insights in the nuanced interplay of memory systems in creative thought.

[1]  R. Sternberg,et al.  The Cambridge handbook of creativity. , 2010 .

[2]  S. Mednick.  The associative basis of the creative process. , 1962, Psychological review.

[3]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  Toward a neurocognitive framework of creative cognition: the role of memory, attention, and cognitive control , 2019, Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.

[4]  John T. Willse,et al.  Assessing Creativity With Divergent Thinking Tasks: Exploring the Reliability and Validity of New Subjective Scoring Methods , 2008 .

[5]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  The Road to Creative Achievement: A Latent Variable Model of Ability and Personality Predictors , 2013, European journal of personality.

[6]  M. Benedek,et al.  Are creative ideas novel and useful , 2015 .

[7]  M. Farah,et al.  Role of left inferior prefrontal cortex in retrieval of semantic knowledge: a reevaluation. , 1997, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[8]  Andreas Fink,et al.  Do creative people use shorter associative pathways , 2010 .

[9]  Satrajit S. Ghosh,et al.  The brain imaging data structure, a format for organizing and describing outputs of neuroimaging experiments , 2016, Scientific Data.

[10]  U. Stangier,et al.  Zeitschrift für Klinische Psychologie und Psychotherapie , 2014 .

[11]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  Creativity and Cognitive Control , 2019, The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity.

[12]  P. Silvia,et al.  The roles of associative and executive processes in creative cognition , 2014, Memory & cognition.

[13]  T. Merten,et al.  Creativity, personality and word association responses: associative behaviour in forty supposedly creative persons , 1999 .

[14]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  To create or to recall original ideas: Brain processes associated with the imagination of novel object uses , 2018, Cortex.

[15]  C. Neuper,et al.  The creative brain: Investigation of brain activity during creative problem solving by means of EEG and FMRI , 2009, Human brain mapping.

[16]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  Assessment of real-life creativity: The Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements (ICAA). , 2017, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

[17]  Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory,et al.  Participation of the left inferior frontal gyrus in human originality , 2017, Brain Structure and Function.

[18]  M. Runco,et al.  The Standard Definition of Creativity , 2012 .

[19]  James C. Kaufman,et al.  Beyond g and c: The relationship of rated creativity to long-term storage and retrieval (Glr). , 2014 .

[20]  Ilona Papousek,et al.  Training of verbal creativity modulates brain activity in regions associated with language‐ and memory‐related demands , 2015, Human brain mapping.

[21]  H. Leder,et al.  Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts , 2011 .

[22]  Rudolf Stark,et al.  Using a shoe as a plant pot: Neural correlates of passive conceptual expansion , 2012, Brain Research.

[23]  Alexander P. Christensen,et al.  Creativity assessment in neuroscience research. , 2019, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

[24]  Urs Gerhard.  Borkenau, P. & Ostendorf, F. (1993). NEO-Fünf-Faktoren Inventar (NEO-FFI) nach Costa und McCrae. Göttingen: Hogrefe. Preis DM 84.- , 1999 .

[25]  Oshin Vartanian,et al.  One-way traffic: The inferior frontal gyrus controls brain activation in the middle temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule during divergent thinking , 2018, Neuropsychologia.

[26]  Edward M. Bowden,et al.  Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight , 2004, PLoS biology.

[27]  Donna Rose Addis,et al.  Neural Mechanisms of Episodic Retrieval Support Divergent Creative Thinking , 2019, Cerebral cortex.

[28]  D. Hassabis,et al.  Deconstructing episodic memory with construction , 2007, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[29]  M. Benedek,et al.  Associative abilities underlying creativity. , 2012 .

[30]  Paul T. Sowden,et al.  The shifting sands of creative thinking: Connections to dual-process theory , 2014, 1409.2207.

[31]  Hari Iyer,et al.  Conscious Augmentation of Creative State Enhances “Real” Creativity in Open-Ended Analogical Reasoning , 2016, PloS one.

[32]  R. N. Spreng,et al.  The Future of Memory: Remembering, Imagining, and the Brain , 2012, Neuron.

[33]  P. Silvia,et al.  Ha ha? Assessing individual differences in humor production ability. , 2017 .

[34]  Nancy C. Andreasen,et al.  Creativity in art and science: are there two cultures? , 2012, Dialogues in clinical neuroscience.

[35]  Talma Hendler,et al.  Chain free association, creativity, and the default mode network , 2018, Neuropsychologia.

[36]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  How semantic memory structure and intelligence contribute to creative thought: a network science approach , 2017 .

[37]  Christopher Hertzog,et al.  Task-Selective Memory Effects for Successfully Implemented Encoding Strategies , 2012, PloS one.

[38]  R. Stark,et al.  Creativity and the brain: Uncovering the neural signature of conceptual expansion , 2012, Neuropsychologia.

[39]  Darya L. Zabelina,et al.  Dynamic network interactions supporting internally-oriented cognition , 2016, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[40]  Richard Levy,et al.  Brain morphometry predicts individual creative potential and the ability to combine remote ideas , 2017, Cortex.

[41]  Roger E. Beaty,et al.  Verbal fluency and creativity: General and specific contributions of broad retrieval ability (Gr) factors to divergent thinking , 2013 .

[42]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  Assessment of Divergent Thinking by means of the Subjective Top-Scoring Method: Effects of the Number of Top-Ideas and Time-on-Task on Reliability and Validity. , 2013, Psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts.

[43]  James K. Kroger,et al.  Rostrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Involvement in Relational Integration during Reasoning , 2001, NeuroImage.

[44]  S. Kosslyn,et al.  Neural Systems Shared by Visual Imagery and Visual Perception: A Positron Emission Tomography Study , 1997, NeuroImage.

[45]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  Spontaneous and Controlled Processes in Creative Cognition , 2018 .

[46]  Thomas T. Liu,et al.  A component based noise correction method (CompCor) for BOLD and perfusion based fMRI , 2007, NeuroImage.

[47]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  Creative ideation, broad retrieval ability, and processing speed: A confirmatory study of nested cognitive abilities , 2019, Intelligence.

[48]  Daniel N. Barry,et al.  The Neural Dynamics of Novel Scene Imagery , 2018, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[49]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  Revisiting Mednick’s Model on Creativity-Related Differences in Associative Hierarchies. Evidence for a Common Path to Uncommon Thought , 2013, The Journal of creative behavior.

[50]  Richard Levy,et al.  Two critical brain networks for generation and combination of remote associations , 2018, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[51]  Sharon L Thompson-Schill,et al.  Functional Fixedness in Creative Thinking Tasks Depends on Stimulus Modality. , 2016, Psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts.

[52]  A. Koestler.  The Act of Creation , 1964 .

[53]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  To create or to recall? Neural mechanisms underlying the generation of creative new ideas☆ , 2014, NeuroImage.

[54]  Adam E. Green,et al.  Frontopolar activity and connectivity support dynamic conscious augmentation of creative state , 2015, Human brain mapping.

[55]  Belén Fernández-Castilla,et al.  Testing conditions and creative performance: Meta-analyses of the impact of time limits and instructions. , 2020 .

[56]  Jonathan A. Fugelsang,et al.  Connecting long distance: semantic distance in analogical reasoning modulates frontopolar cortex activity. , 2010, Cerebral cortex.

[57]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  Creative constraints: Brain activity and network dynamics underlying semantic interference during idea production , 2017, NeuroImage.

[58]  Mathias Benedek,et al.  Creating metaphors: The neural basis of figurative language production , 2014, NeuroImage.

[59]  J. Rossiter,et al.  The Remote Associates Test: Divergent or Convergent Thinking? , 1966, Psychological reports.

[60]  M. Benedek,et al.  Intelligence, creativity, and cognitive control: The common and differential involvement of executive functions in intelligence and creativity , 2014, Intelligence.

[61]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  Core Network Contributions to Remembering the Past, Imagining the Future, and Thinking Creatively , 2018, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[62]  Jeffrey D. Johnson,et al.  Recollection and the reinstatement of encoding-related cortical activity. , 2007, Cerebral cortex.

[63]  J. Kaufman,et al.  Neuroscience of Creativity , 2013, Creativity.

[64]  Satrajit S. Ghosh,et al.  FMRIPrep: a robust preprocessing pipeline for functional MRI , 2018, bioRxiv.

[65]  David J. Therriault,et al.  The cognitive underpinnings of creative thought: A latent variable analysis exploring the roles of intelligence and working memory in three creative thinking processes , 2013 .

[66]  F Barkhof,et al.  fMRI of visual encoding: Reproducibility of activation , 1999, Human brain mapping.

[67]  William W. Graves,et al.  Where is the semantic system? A critical review and meta-analysis of 120 functional neuroimaging studies. , 2009, Cerebral cortex.

[68]  Jeremy R. Gray,et al.  Thin slices of creativity: Using single-word utterances to assess creative cognition , 2013, Behavior research methods.

[69]  P. Borkenau,et al.  NEO-Fünf-Faktoren-Inventar (NEO-FFI) nach Costa und McCrae : Handanweisung , 1993 .

[70]  R W Cox,et al.  Software tools for analysis and visualization of fMRI data , 1997, NMR in biomedicine.

[71]  Anna Abraham,et al.  Creative conceptual expansion: A combined fMRI replication and extension study to examine individual differences in creativity , 2018, Neuropsychologia.

[72]  D. Schacter,et al.  Creative Cognition and Brain Network Dynamics , 2016, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[73]  Sabine Schulte im Walde,et al.  Automatically Generated Affective Norms of Abstractness, Arousal, Imageability and Valence for 350 000 German Lemmas , 2016, LREC.

[74]  Selcuk Acar,et al.  What should people be told when they take a divergent thinking test? A meta-analytic review of explicit instructions for divergent thinking. , 2020 .