CREATIVITY, summary of a New Scientist special featu Options

[Guest_Toumai_*]

CREATIVITY

What happens in our minds as we write? Why are some people more creative than others? New Scientist (29th October, 2005) had a special section on creativity in the arts and science. It is very well worth reading the full section if you can find it in the library (you don’t have to be a scientist to follow the discussion! ). I have picked a few of the most relevant ideas to summarise here. The original articles cite sources for the most recent and/or accepted research into creative processes.

Looking for Inspiration

Inspiration is hard to explain. We may be aware of the moment of insight, but the ideas may have been incubating for a long time.

Creativity is not the same as intelligence, though intelligence can channel the ideas to good use; creativity is more linked to personality. There are also links to mental illness; changes in mood state may spark a creative burst and some features of schizophrenia are more common in creative types with high scores in lateral, divergent and open thinking. The brains of creative people may be more open to incoming stimuli; not as much information is screened and blocked.

Creativity has two stages: inspiration and elaboration. In the first, while people are dreaming up an idea (a story, for example), the conscious mind is relaxed while the subconscious is making connections. The alpha brain wave activity is similar to that seen in some stages of sleep and relaxation. Once the story has been discovered the conscious brain activity increases to develop it. It seems that creativity depends on the ability to switch between these two states as required.

The brain’s frontal lobes become very active in a situation where complex creative processes are occurring. It is thought that this brain area co-ordinates activity and the flow of ideas. Where there are many possibilities for a story, it helps select the most promising lines: a conscious evaluation of ideas.

The most creative people are aware of their creative potential and make the most of it by using the rhythms of the day, the weekend and holidays to focus. They may work at their desk for a while then go for a walk, because they know that works for them.

Finally, for creativity you need at least one other person in your life who doesn’t think you are completely nuts.

MUSic

In an interview Alex Kapranos (of Franz Ferdinand) explained that there are two different stages of writing a song: an initial creative splurge and then a stage of chopping it about and arranging it. “The best songs come straight out …. You’re trying to control something but you’re not quite sure which direction it’s going … The actual writing …is fairly easy. It feels really exciting. You loose your sense of where you are. But the second process is very ruthless and cold because you have to cut away things that you’re attached to.”

“The Midnight Disease”: hypergraphia

Alice Flaherty, a neurologist, lost premature twins and started writing compulsively. If she were deprived of paper she would write on her own body – anything, so long as she could write.

Such compulsive creativity may be linked to unusual activity in the brain’s temporal lobes. There are links with temporal lobe epilepsy (Dostoevsky syndrome), front-temporal dementia and mood disorders. The behaviour of blocked/depressed people is often similar to those who have frontal lobe injuries. Frontal lobe activity increases in creative people who are actively seeking a creative idea.

“There is mounting evidence that the front-to-back communication between the frontal and the temporal lobes is more important for creativity than the left brain-right brain model of the 1970s.”

Fran