Back in the 1940s, historian
Rosamund Harding noted the creative
process of famous musicians and
writers involves habits of motion.
Twain paced and dictated, Dickens
walked and thought, Goethe
composed on horseback and Mozart
in the back of a carriage. Harding
wrote “that state of mind is most
favourable to the birth of ideas.”
Recent research suggests that
diverting our attention could unlock
our creativity. First, forget the whole
idea that your left hemisphere is
creative and the left is logical. When
you use your imagination you use lots
of different structures across your
entire brain. Research suggests that
the interaction of three brain
networks influences your creative
thinking. The Executive Attention
Network depends on your working
memory and is active when you are
really focused on a task, like hard
calculus homework.
The Imagination Network creates
mental simulations about future
events and is active when you
consider other people’s thoughts or
perspectives. Lastly, the Salience
Network monitors your internal
consciousness and events that
occur outside your body, so it can
direct your attention to what’s most
important. When all these networks
are active, it can actually diminish
creative thinking. Reducing the
activity of Executive Attention
Network just a little can boost our
creativity. mISmIer and a group
without were given a series of tasks
to test their working memory.
Researchers found the children
without ADHD had more activity in
their Attention Network and less in
their Imagination Network.
Those with ADHD couldn’t deactivate
their imagination Network to focus on
the task and overall, they had slower
response times. Children and adults with
ADHD have trouble focusing their
attention, but again and again research
shows they are more creative because
their Imagination Network is really active.
Focused attention has also been shown
to limit spontaneity. In another study,
jazz musicians gave an improvised
performance while they were inside a
fMRI machine. When they spontaneously
improvised, brain structures involved in
the Imagination Network were more
active. And when they played an over-
learned musical sequence, like a scale, the
brain structures of their Attention
Network were more active (their working
memory).