Mapping the Creative Mind
By Roger E. Beaty, Yoed N. Kenett
Network science and brain-imaging studies are uncovering how we transform knowledge into inspiration.
This Article From Issue
July-August 2020
Volume 108, Number 4
Page 218
We all know someone who is especially clever, witty, or imaginative—not just the well-known creative types such as Paul McCartney or J. K. Rowling, but also people from our daily lives who seem to have highly creative minds. You may aspire to be one of them. You may even consider yourself one of them.
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- Network science offers a way to analyze the complex psychological and neural processes at work inside the brain, and thus to understand the nature of creativity.
- The notion of semantic distance is crucial for measuring novelty and originality in a quantitative way. More creative brains are able to make longer, bolder semantic leaps.
- Creative thinking is associated with distinctive patterns of brain activity, including unusual co-activation between brain networks that do not normally operate at the same time.
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