University of Toronto, Scarborough, Canada.
Br J Psychol. 2012 Aug;103(3):302-16. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02073.x. Epub 2011 Oct 3.
Two recent reviews of the neuroimaging literature on creativity have pointed to inconsistent findings across studies, calling into question the usefulness of the theoretical constructs motivating the search for its neural bases. However, it is argued that consistent patterns of neural activation do emerge when the cognitive process and the neuroimaging method are kept uniform across studies. To demonstrate this empirically, the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method was used to conduct quantitative meta-analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments of analogy and metaphor - two processes related to creativity and included in the recent reviews. The results demonstrated that analogy and metaphor reliably activate consistent but dissociable brain regions across fMRI studies. The implications of the findings for cognitive theories of analogy and metaphor are discussed. Furthermore, these results demonstrate that to the extent that creativity has heterogeneous sources, its neural instantiation will vary as a function of the underlying cognitive processes.
两篇关于创造力神经影像学文献的最新综述指出，研究结果不一致，这对寻找创造力神经基础的理论结构的有用性提出了质疑。然而，有人认为，当研究中保持认知过程和神经影像学方法一致时，就会出现一致的神经激活模式。为了从经验上证明这一点，使用激活可能性估计（ALE）方法对类比和隐喻的功能磁共振成像（fMRI）实验进行了定量元分析——这两个过程与创造力有关，并且包含在最近的综述中。结果表明，类比和隐喻在 fMRI 研究中可靠地激活一致但可分离的大脑区域。讨论了这些发现对类比和隐喻的认知理论的意义。此外，这些结果表明，创造力的来源具有异质性，其神经实现将根据潜在的认知过程而变化。
