http://www.visualnews.com/2015/08/18/new-research-says-cerebellum-contributes-to-creativity/
by Katy French
Whether it’s electrical stimulation of the brain, taking a walk, or doing something boring, scientists are constantly looking for ways to help us be more creative. Neuroscientists are particularly interested in which areas of the brain contribute to or control creativity, and new research is giving us a little more insight. A new study by Stanford’s School of Medicine and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design has found an unexpected link between creativity and the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls movement.
TImg: Wiki Commons
This part of the brain has never been
recognized as contributing to the creative process, but it turns out
that it does play a part. For the study, researchers devised a method to
test creativity—without explicitly telling participants that they were
supposed to be creative—and monitored brainwave activity to identify
what areas of the brain were being activated.
Participants were given two tasks: Visually
depict certain words (a la Pictionary), such as “vote” or “salute,” and
draw a zigzag line (a task that requires motor skills but not much
creativity). While they performed the tasks, participants’ brains were
monitored via MRI scans. Once the drawings were completed, participants
were asked to rate how difficult the words they were given to draw were
(to give researchers a sense of perceived difficulty). After the
experiment, researchers analyzed and rated the drawings for creativity
according to specific criteria, including accuracy of depiction, number
of elements in the drawing, how elaborate or original the drawing was,
etc.
What they found was surprising.
Participants’ responses tracked with brainwave activity, meaning those
who perceived a word to be more difficult exhibited higher activity in
the left prefrontal cortex, an executive-function center responsible
for attention and evaluation. But those who had produced more creative
drawings exhibited low activity in the same center. The cerebellum was
also particularly active for participants whose drawings were more
creative—surprising as it has generally been thought to be responsible
only for motor movement. In short, just drawing the zigzag lines didn’t
produce nearly as much brain activity as the creative drawings did. Even
more interestingly, more activity in certain areas signified a decrease
in creativity.
“We found that activation of the brain’s
executive-control centers — the parts of the brain that enable you to
plan, organize and manage your activities — is negatively associated
with creative task performance,” says Allan Reiss, MD, professor of radiology and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.
“As our study also shows, sometimes a deliberate attempt to be
creative may not be the best way to optimize your creativity,”
Reiss says. “While greater effort to produce creative outcomes involves
more activity of executive-control regions, you actually may have to
reduce activity in those regions in order to achieve creative outcomes.”What does that really mean? If you want to be more creative, don’t think so hard.
We’re down with that.
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