THE MOLECULE OF MOREDISCOVERING THE SOURCE OF CREATIVITY...Oshin Vartanian, a researcher at York University in Toronto, wanted to
figure out what part of the brain was most active when people discov-
ered novel solutions to problems, so he scanned people’s brains while
they were solving a problem that required creativity. He found that
when they discovered the solution to the problem, the front of their
brains on the right side was activated. He wondered if this part of the
brain was also involved in model breaking.
In a second experiment he asked participants not to solve a prob-
lem but simply to use their imagination. First he asked them to imagine
real things, such as “a flower that is a rose.” Then he asked them to
imagine things that don’t exist, things that don’t fit the conventional
model of reality, such as “a living thing that is a helicopter.” With the
volunteers in the scanner, he found that the same part of the brain lit up
as before, but only when participants thought about objects that did not
exist in life. When they imagined reality itself, the region stayed dark.
Brain scans of people with schizophrenia show changes in that
same area, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Maybe it’s because
when we are being creative, we behave a little bit like a person with
schizophrenia. We stop inhibiting aspects of reality that we had previ-
ously written off as unimportant, and we attach salience to things we
once thought were irrelevant.
... AND SHOCKING IT TO LIFE
Finding the neural basis of creativity has enormous potential, because
creativity is the most valuable resource in the world. New ways of grow-
ing crops feed millions of people. From candles to light bulbs, innova-
tions in turning fuel into light have decreased its cost by a factor of a
thousand. Might there be a way to boost this priceless treasure? Would
it be possible for someone to become more creative if a scientist stim-
ulated the parts of the brain that are active during creative thinking?