Creative tasks have been found to map to a brain circuit on the right frontal pole, according to research in the US.
And that injury and neurological disease have the potential to unleash creativity.
The researchers evaluated data from 857 people across 36 fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies and published the findings in the journal JAMA Network Open.
The study asked the question: What brain regions are key for human creativity and how does this relate to the effects of brain injuries?.
The researchers found that many complex human behaviours such as creativity don’t map to a specific brain region but do to specific brain circuits
Some people with neurologic diseases experience a surge of creative behaviour and show specific patterns of damage that align with the creativity circuit identified in the study.
Julian Kutsche, who completed a fellowship at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, led the study in collaboration with researchers at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Boston Children’s Hospital, University College London, University of Georgia, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and Charité Berlin.
Kutsche said the most interesting finding is that different brain regions activated by creative tasks were all negatively connected to the right frontal pole.
This part of the brain is important for monitoring and rule-based behaviours.
Co-senior author Isaiah Kletenik, a neurologist in the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said reduced activity in the right frontal pole could align with the hypothesis that creativity requires shutting down a function.
Creativity may depend on inhibiting self-censoring assessments that could then allow free association and idea generation to flow more freely.
"To be creative you may have to turn off your inner critic to allow yourself to find new directions and even make mistakes,” Kletenik said
“These findings could help explain how some neurodegenerative diseases might lead to decreases in creativity while others may show a paradoxical increase in creativity.
“It could also potentially add a pathway for brain stimulation to increase human creativity.”
Kletenik said it is important to note that these findings do not represent the entire neural circuitry involved in creativity, adding that many different parts of the brain are involved in completing different creative tasks.
“We are learning more about neurodiversity and how brain changes that are considered pathological may improve function in some ways," he said.
“These findings help us better understand how the circuitry of our brains may influence and unleash creativity.”
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