Heilman Kenneth M, Nadeau Stephen E, Beversdorf David O
Department of Neurology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL 32610-02366, USA.
Neurocase. 2003 Oct;9(5):369-79. doi: 10.1076/neur.9.5.369.16553.
This article reviews and develops some theories about the neurobiological basis of creative innovation (CI). CI is defined as the ability to understand and express novel orderly relationships. A high level of general intelligence, domain-specific knowledge and special skills are necessary components of creativity. Specialized knowledge is stored in specific portions of the temporal and parietal lobes. Some anatomic studies suggest that talented people might have alterations of specific regions of the posterior neocortical architecture, but further systematic studies are needed. Intelligence, knowledge and special skills, however, are not sufficient for CI. Developing alternative solutions or divergent thinking has been posited to be a critical element of CI, and clinical as well as functional imaging studies suggest that the frontal lobes are important for these activities. The frontal lobes have strong connections with the polymodal and supramodal regions of the temporal and parietal lobes where concepts and knowledge are stored. These connections might selectively inhibit and activate portions of posterior neocortex and thus be important for developing alternative solutions. Although extensive knowledge and divergent thinking together are critical for creativity they alone are insufficient for allowing a person to find the thread that unites. Finding this thread might require the binding of different forms of knowledge, stored in separate cortical modules that have not been previously associated. Thus, CI might require the co-activation and communication between regions of the brain that ordinarily are not strongly connected. The observations that CI often occurs during levels of low arousal and that many people with depression are creative suggests that alterations of neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine might be important in CI. High levels of norepinephrine, produced by high rates of locus coeruleus firing, restrict the breadth of concept representations and increase the signal to noise ratio, but low levels of norepinephrine shift the brain toward intrinsic neuronal activation with an increase in the size of distributed concept representations and co-activation across modular networks. In addition to being important in divergent thinking, the frontal lobes are also the primary cortical region that controls the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system. Thus creative people may be endowed with brains that are capable of storing extensive specialized knowledge in their temporoparietal cortex, be capable of frontal mediated divergent thinking and have a special ability to modulate the frontal lobe-locus coeruleus (norepinephrine) system, such that during creative innovation cerebral levels of norepinephrine diminish, leading to the discovery of novel orderly relationships.
本文回顾并阐述了一些关于创造性创新（CI）神经生物学基础的理论。CI被定义为理解和表达新颖有序关系的能力。高水平的一般智力、特定领域知识和特殊技能是创造力的必要组成部分。专业知识存储在颞叶和顶叶的特定区域。一些解剖学研究表明，有天赋的人可能在新皮质后区特定区域存在改变，但还需要进一步的系统研究。然而，智力、知识和特殊技能对于CI来说并不充分。提出发展替代解决方案或发散性思维是CI的关键要素，临床以及功能成像研究表明额叶对于这些活动很重要。额叶与颞叶和顶叶的多模态和超模态区域有紧密联系，概念和知识就存储在这些区域。这些联系可能选择性地抑制和激活新皮质后部的部分区域，因此对于发展替代解决方案很重要。虽然广泛的知识和发散性思维对于创造力都很关键，但仅靠它们还不足以让一个人找到统一的线索。找到这条线索可能需要将存储在以前未关联的不同皮质模块中的不同形式的知识结合起来。因此，CI可能需要大脑中通常没有紧密连接的区域之间的共同激活和交流。CI常常在低唤醒水平时出现以及许多抑郁症患者具有创造力这些观察结果表明，去甲肾上腺素等神经递质的改变在CI中可能很重要。由蓝斑高频率放电产生的高水平去甲肾上腺素会限制概念表征的广度并增加信噪比，但低水平的去甲肾上腺素会使大脑转向内在神经元激活，分布式概念表征的规模增加且跨模块网络共同激活。除了在发散性思维中很重要外，额叶也是控制蓝斑 - 去甲肾上腺素系统的主要皮质区域。因此，有创造力的人可能拥有这样的大脑：能够在颞顶叶皮质中存储广泛的专业知识，能够进行额叶介导的发散性思维，并具有调节额叶 - 蓝斑（去甲肾上腺素）系统的特殊能力，使得在创造性创新过程中大脑中的去甲肾上腺素水平降低，从而发现新颖的有序关系。
