Cognitive mechanisms underlying the creative process

This paper proposes an explanation of the cognitive change that occurs as the creative process proceeds. During the initial, intuitive phase, each thought activates, and potentially retrieves information from, a large region containing many memory locations. Because of the distributed, content-addressable structure of memory, the diverse contents of these many locations merge to generate the next thought. Novel associations often result. As one focuses on an idea, the region searched and retrieved from narrows, such that the next thought is the product of fewer memory locations. This enables a shift from association-based to causation-based thinking, which facilitates the fine-tuning and manifestation of the creative work.

[1]  Rocky Ross,et al.  Mental models , 2004, SIGA.

[2]  Rémy Lestienne,et al.  Determination of the precision of spike timing in the visual cortex of anaesthetised cats , 2004, Biological Cybernetics.

[3]  Kamran Baig.  An act of creation , 2003, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[4]  M. Walsh,et al.  An Introduction , 2002, The Counseling Psychologist.

[5]  Diederik Aerts,et al.  Contextualizing concepts using a mathematical generalization of the quantum formalism , 2002, J. Exp. Theor. Artif. Intell..

[6]  Diederik Aerts,et al.  Contextualizing Concepts , 2002, FLAIRS.

[7]  L. Gabora.  The beer can theory of creativity , 2001, 1309.7414.

[8]  L. Rips,et al.  Necessity and natural categories. , 2001, Psychological bulletin.

[9]  Liane Gabora,et al.  Toward a Theory of Creative Inklings , 2013, 1310.0736.

[10]  C. Martindale.  Biological bases of creativity. , 1998 .

[11]  Gregory J. Feist.  Handbook of Creativity: The Influence of Personality on Artistic and Scientific Creativity , 1998 .

[12]  Peter Cariani,et al.  Temporal coding of sensory information , 1997 .

[13]  Y Lu,et al.  A Sequential Learning Scheme for Function Approximation Using Minimal Radial Basis Function Neural Networks , 1997, Neural Computation.

[14]  Mahesan Niranjan,et al.  Average-Case Learning Curves for Radial Basis Function Networks , 1997, Neural Computation.

[15]  William Bialek,et al.  Spikes: Exploring the Neural Code , 1996 .

[16]  S. Sloman.  The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. , 1996 .

[17]  H. Eysenck.  Genius: The Natural History of Creativity , 1995 .

[18]  E. Fodor,et al.  Subclinical manifestations of psychosis-proneness, ego strength, and creativity , 1995 .

[19]  Terri Gullickson.  The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. , 1995 .

[20]  Gudmund J. W. Smith,et al.  Creativity through psychosomatics , 1994 .

[21]  E. Vaadia,et al.  Spatiotemporal firing patterns in the frontal cortex of behaving monkeys. , 1993, Journal of neurophysiology.

[22]  V B Mountcastle.  Temporal Order Determinants in a Somesthetic Frequency Discrimination: Sequential Order Coding , 1993, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[23]  E. Capaldi,et al.  The organization of behavior. , 1992, Journal of applied behavior analysis.

[24]  K. Pribram.  Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing , 1991 .

[25]  William A. Phillips,et al.  A Biologically Supported Error-Correcting Learning Rule , 1991, Neural Computation.

[26]  M. Boden.  The creative mind : myths & mechanisms , 1991 .

[27]  Peter Dayan,et al.  Optimal Plasticity from Matrix Memories: What Goes Up Must Come Down , 1990, Neural Computation.

[28]  Geoffrey E. Hinton,et al.  Distributed Representations , 1986, The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence.

[29]  David H. Helman,et al.  Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge , 1989 .

[30]  Pentti Kanerva,et al.  Sparse Distributed Memory , 1988 .

[31]  R. Richards,et al.  Creativity in manic-depressives, cyclothymes, their normal relatives, and control subjects. , 1988, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[32]  Bernard L. Strehler,et al.  Time structure and stimulus dependence of precisely replicating patterns present in monkey cortical neuronal spike trains , 1987, Brain Research.

[33]  J. Austin.  Associative memory , 1987 .

[34]  James L. McClelland,et al.  Parallel distributed processing: explorations in the microstructure of cognition, vol. 1: foundations , 1986 .

[35]  R. Weisberg.  Creativity - Genius and Other Myths , 1986 .

[36]  C. von der Malsburg,et al.  Am I Thinking Assemblies , 1986 .

[37]  J. J. Hopfield,et al.  ‘Unlearning’ has a stabilizing effect in collective memories , 1983, Nature.

[38]  Jerome A. Feldman,et al.  Connectionist Models and Their Properties , 1982, Cogn. Sci..

[39]  J J Hopfield,et al.  Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities. , 1982, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[40]  Raimond Emmers.  Pain : a spike-interval coded message in the brain , 1981 .

[41]  Daniel C. Dennett,et al.  Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology , 1981 .

[42]  C. Martindale,et al.  EEG differences as a function of creativity, stage of the creative process, and effort to be original , 1978, Biological Psychology.

[43]  Colin Martindale,et al.  Creativity, consciousness, and cortical arousal. , 1978 .

[44]  G. A. Mendelsohn,et al.  Associative and attentional processes in creative performance1 , 1976 .

[45]  A. Mcghie,et al.  A Comparative Study of Attentional Strategies of Schizophrenic and Highly Creative Normal Subjects , 1976, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[46]  C. Martindale,et al.  The relationship of creativity to cortical activation and its operant control. , 1974, The Journal of genetic psychology.

[47]  Kenneth R. Keeling,et al.  Heart-Rate Variability in Creative Functioning , 1971, Psychological reports.

[48]  K. Dewing,et al.  Attention deployment and nonverbal fluency. , 1971 .

[49]  P. O. Bishop,et al.  Spatial vision. , 1971, Annual review of psychology.

[50]  MAURICE CROSLAND,et al.  Foundations of Science , 1970, Nature.

[51]  S. G. Wallas.  The Art of Thought. Harcourt Brace & World Inc. 1926 , 1970 .

[52]  D. Marr.  A theory of cerebellar cortex , 1969, The Journal of physiology.

[53]  J. Robson,et al.  Application of fourier analysis to the visibility of gratings , 1968, The Journal of physiology.

[54]  C. Stumpf,et al.  Drug action on the electrical activity of the hippocampus. , 1965, International review of neurobiology.

[55]  U. Neisser.  The multiplicity of thought. , 1963, British journal of psychology.

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

[57]  J. Hadamard,et al.  The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. , 1945 .

[58]  J. Piaget.  The Language and Thought of the Child , 1927 .

[59]  D. Spalding.  The Principles of Psychology , 1873, Nature.