Towards a Unified Understanding of Creativity

In this article, you will learn how creativity relates to the field of neuroscience and also apply these principles to real-life scenarios.

It is tempting to think, or maybe hope, that neuroscience will explain everything about creativity. It would be great if it could, but for now, this is not the case. In a recent peer-reviewed article that reviews six recent textbooks about the neuroscience of creativity, the author explains:

It is worth pointing out that no unified paradigm or framework has yet emerged to tame creativity in purely neuroscientific terms, and book-length discussions of these topics remain refreshingly unalike’ (Kozbelt, 2019)

‘The contexts or problem solving situations that prompt creative cognition (e.g. compose a haiku) are relatively more open-ended, ambiguous, non-linear, abstract and unpredictable compared to those that primarily necessitate normative cognition (e.g. devise a weekly exercise regime.)’

Understanding what neuroscience says about creativity can help us conceptualise creativity in a way that can help us be more creative, or teach others to be more creative (Onarheim and Friis-Olivarius 2013).

References

Abraham A (2014). Creative thinking as orchestrated by semantic processing vs cognitive control brain networks. Frontiers in human neuroscience. 8. 95. [Link.](https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00095

Kozbelt, A (2019) Six recent books on the neuroscience of creativity: notes from the underbelly. Evolutionary studies in imaginative culture, 2019-10-01, (Vol 3(2), p73-82

Onarheim B and Friis-Olivarius M (2013) Applying the neuroscience of creativity to training. Link.