Studies focusing
on the origins of creativity have been conducted with a grain of salt attached
to each one. The struggle in analyzing creativity is finding the best method by
which one can allow a participant’s innate creative abilities to be studied
while under strict laboratory conditions. Recently, researchers have been
attempting to discover more creative ways by which they may study creativity. Liu
and his fellow researchers focused on identifying the creative neural pathways
associated with freestyle rap. These researchers theorized that the process of
creating freestyle raps was a two-fold process; part one involves the
spontaneous creation of the verses of rap, while part two serves as an editing
and revision step where the lyrics are revised and then rapped out loud. The
participants were split into two groups, an experimental group told to
freestyle rap, as well as a control group given a rehearsed verse to perform,
and were compared using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
This study compared its results
between the experimental and control group by analyzing the brain activity of
each group. The researchers’ most relevant data found that the experimental
group illustrated increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and
decreased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). In humans,
the MPFC is associated more-so with self-perception, self-knowledge, and moral
decisions, various aspects of social cognition. The DLPFC has been known to be
connected with working memory, willed action, and especially executive
attention. It has been generally thought that higher levels of activity in the
DLPFC are positively correlated with higher levels of creativity in the actions
of various individuals. However, Liu and his colleagues illustrate the opposite
result here; the group shown to have higher levels of creativity simultaneously
showed decreased activity in their DLPFCs. As the DLPFC is a primary control
factor of executive attention, these results appear to indicate that the
attention is not a necessity for higher levels of creative cognition in humans.
Not all research studies analyzing
creativity and attention come to the same conclusion as Liu and his associates
did. Though attention was not the primary concern in Liu’s experiment, his
results indicated that attention played a minor role in one’s ability to
creatively think. However, Zabelina and Beeman’s experiment focused solely on
attention and its’ relationship with creative cognition. Their study introduced
two different hypotheses regarding how attention relates to creativity; one
hypothesis involves the idea of attentional flexibility (being able to shift
focus between two different stimuli) and divergent thinking (the ability to
create a myriad of various ideas), while the second hypothesis focuses on
attentional persistence (one’s ability to focus for a lengthy period of time)
and its’ relationship to real-world creative achievements. Once the
participants were categorized into high and low creative levels, Zabelina and
Beeman ran two different experiments asking the participants to determine if a
stimulus was in the shape of an S or an H in a variety of ways.
The
results indicated that those of higher creative cognition levels had a greater
switch cost between the different stimuli and made mistakes more often in
determining the correct stimulus. Attentional persistence was shown to play
significant factor in the finding of the data, while attentional flexibility
was not significant. Overall, both Zabelina and Liu’s experiments showed
negative correlations between creativity and attention. Again, while it was not
the focus of Liu’s study, the decreased activity of the DLPFC in the
experimental group illustrated that the more creative group also had lowered
levels of attention than the control group with lower creativity scores. Zabelina’s
results showed that those with higher creativity levels actually had poorer
results in activities involving attentional persistence, while attentional
flexibility simply was not relevant to the results of the experiments at all.
Both studies analyzed creativity through two completely different methodologies,
and yet they both found attention to play a much less significant role than is assumed
by the general public. As shown through these studies, one’s ability to be
creative may not be dictated through paying attention after all.
Liu et al. (2012).
Neural correlates of lyrical improvisation: an fMRI study of freestyle rap. Scientific Reports, 2. doi:10.1038/srep00834
Zabelina, D.L.
& Beeman, M. (2013). Short-term attentional perseveration associated with
real-life creative achievement. Frontiers
in Psychology. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.0019
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