University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology, PO Box 15919, 1001 NK Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology, PO Box 15919, 1001 NK Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Neuropsychologia. 2017 Sep;104:8-17. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.07.033. Epub 2017 Jul 31.
Critical to creative cognition and performance is both the generation of multiple alternative solutions in response to open-ended problems (divergent thinking) and a series of cognitive operations that converges on the correct or best possible answer (convergent thinking). Although the neural underpinnings of divergent and convergent thinking are still poorly understood, several electroencephalography (EEG) studies point to differences in alpha-band oscillations between these thinking modes. We reason that, because most previous studies employed typical block designs, these pioneering findings may mainly reflect the more sustained aspects of creative processes that extend over longer time periods, and that still much is unknown about the faster-acting neural mechanisms that dissociate divergent from convergent thinking during idea generation. To this end, we developed a new event-related paradigm, in which we measured participants' tendency to implicitly follow a rule set by examples, versus breaking that rule, during the generation of novel names for specific categories (e.g., pasta, planets). This approach allowed us to compare the oscillatory dynamics of rule convergent and rule divergent idea generation and at the same time enabled us to measure spontaneous switching between these thinking modes on a trial-to-trial basis. We found that, relative to more systematic, rule convergent thinking, rule divergent thinking was associated with widespread decreases in delta band activity. Therefore, this study contributes to advancing our understanding of the neural underpinnings of creativity by addressing some methodological challenges that neuroscientific creativity research faces.
关键的创造性认知和表现是在开放式问题（发散思维）的反应中产生多种替代解决方案，以及一系列认知操作，这些操作集中在正确或最佳可能的答案（聚合思维）上。尽管发散思维和聚合思维的神经基础仍未得到很好的理解，但几项脑电图（EEG）研究表明，这两种思维模式之间的阿尔法波段振荡存在差异。我们认为，由于大多数先前的研究采用了典型的块设计，这些开创性的发现可能主要反映了创造性过程中更持续的方面，这些过程会持续更长时间，而对于在产生创意时将发散思维与聚合思维区分开来的更快作用的神经机制，我们仍然知之甚少。为此，我们开发了一种新的事件相关范式，在这种范式中，我们测量了参与者在为特定类别（例如面食、行星）生成新名称时，隐含地遵循示例设定的规则与打破该规则的倾向。这种方法使我们能够比较规则聚合和规则发散思维产生的振荡动力学，同时使我们能够在试验基础上测量这些思维模式之间的自发切换。我们发现，与更系统的、规则聚合的思维相比，规则发散的思维与 delta 波段活动的广泛减少有关。因此，这项研究通过解决神经科学创造力研究面临的一些方法学挑战，为深入了解创造力的神经基础做出了贡献。
