Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon.
Psychol Bull. 2010 Sep;136(5):822-48. doi: 10.1037/a0019749.
Creativity is a cornerstone of what makes us human, yet the neural mechanisms underlying creative thinking are poorly understood. A recent surge of interest into the neural underpinnings of creative behavior has produced a banquet of data that is tantalizing but, considered as a whole, deeply self-contradictory. We review the emerging literature and take stock of several long-standing theories and widely held beliefs about creativity. A total of 72 experiments, reported in 63 articles, make up the core of the review. They broadly fall into 3 categories: divergent thinking, artistic creativity, and insight. Electroencephalographic studies of divergent thinking yield highly variegated results. Neuroimaging studies of this paradigm also indicate no reliable changes above and beyond diffuse prefrontal activation. These findings call into question the usefulness of the divergent thinking construct in the search for the neural basis of creativity. A similarly inconclusive picture emerges for studies of artistic performance, except that this paradigm also often yields activation of motor and temporoparietal regions. Neuroelectric and imaging studies of insight are more consistent, reflecting changes in anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal areas. Taken together, creative thinking does not appear to critically depend on any single mental process or brain region, and it is not especially associated with right brains, defocused attention, low arousal, or alpha synchronization, as sometimes hypothesized. To make creativity tractable in the brain, it must be further subdivided into different types that can be meaningfully associated with specific neurocognitive processes.
创造力是人类的基石之一，但创造性思维的神经机制仍未被充分理解。最近，人们对创造性行为的神经基础产生了浓厚的兴趣，产生了大量令人着迷但整体上自相矛盾的数据。我们回顾了新兴的文献，并对创造力的一些长期理论和普遍观点进行了评估。总共 72 项实验，报告在 63 篇文章中，构成了综述的核心。它们大致分为 3 类：发散思维、艺术创造力和顿悟。发散思维的脑电图研究产生了高度多样化的结果。该范式的神经影像学研究也表明，除了弥漫性前额叶激活之外，没有可靠的变化。这些发现质疑了发散思维结构在寻找创造力的神经基础方面的有用性。对于艺术表现的研究也出现了类似的不确定情况，只是这个范式也经常产生运动和颞顶区域的激活。顿悟的神经电和成像研究更为一致，反映了前扣带皮层和前额叶区域的变化。总之，创造性思维似乎并不特别依赖于任何单一的心理过程或大脑区域，也不像有时假设的那样，与右脑、注意力分散、低唤醒或α 同步性特别相关。为了使创造力在大脑中变得可行，它必须进一步细分为不同的类型，可以与特定的神经认知过程有意义地联系起来。
