Khalil Radwa, Frühholz Sascha, Godde Ben
School of Business, Social and Decision Sciences, Constructor University, Bremen, Germany.
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit, Zurich, Switzerland.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2025 Mar;46(4):e70182. doi: 10.1002/hbm.70182.
Emotions remarkably impact our creative minds; nevertheless, a comprehensive mapping of their underlying neural mechanisms remains elusive. Therefore, we examined the influence of emotion induction on ideational originality and its associated neural dynamics. Participants were randomly presented with three short videos with sad, neutral, and happy content. After each video, ideational originality was evaluated using the alternate uses task. Both happy and sad inductions significantly enhanced ideational originality relative to the neutral induction condition. However, no significant difference was observed in ideational originality between the happy and sad emotion inductions. Associated neural dynamics were assessed through EEG time-frequency (TF) power and phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) analyses. Our findings suggest that emotional states elicit distinct TF and PAC profiles associated with ideational originality. Relative to baseline, gamma activity was enhanced after the neutral induction and more enhanced after the induction of a happy emotion but reduced after the induction of sad emotion 2-4 s after starting the task. Our functional connectivity couplings suggest that inducing happy and sad emotions may influence the working memory and attentional system differently, leading to varying effects on associated processing modes. Inducing a happy emotion may result in decreased neural activity and processing of rich information in working memory for exploring more original ideas through cognitive flexibility. In contrast, inducing a sad emotion may enhance neural activity and increase coupling within the attention system to exploit and select fewer original ideas through cognitive persistence.
情绪对我们的创造性思维有着显著影响；然而，对其潜在神经机制的全面描绘仍然难以捉摸。因此，我们研究了情绪诱导对观念原创性及其相关神经动力学的影响。参与者被随机播放三段分别带有悲伤、中性和快乐内容的短视频。每段视频播放后，使用替代用途任务评估观念原创性。与中性诱导条件相比，快乐和悲伤诱导均显著提高了观念原创性。然而，快乐和悲伤情绪诱导之间在观念原创性上未观察到显著差异。通过脑电图时频（TF）功率和相位-振幅耦合（PAC）分析评估相关神经动力学。我们的研究结果表明，情绪状态会引发与观念原创性相关的不同TF和PAC特征。相对于基线，中性诱导后伽马活动增强，快乐情绪诱导后增强更多，但悲伤情绪诱导后在任务开始2 - 4秒后伽马活动减弱。我们的功能连接耦合表明，诱导快乐和悲伤情绪可能对工作记忆和注意力系统产生不同影响，从而对相关处理模式产生不同效果。诱导快乐情绪可能导致神经活动减少以及对工作记忆中丰富信息的处理减少，以便通过认知灵活性探索更多原创想法。相反，诱导悲伤情绪可能增强神经活动并增加注意力系统内的耦合，从而通过认知持久性利用和选择较少的原创想法。
