Have you ever wondered about creativity? What is creativity? How does our brain work when we think outside the box? Is creativity inducible? If yes, then how? I admire your curiosity and shall answer your questions one by one.
“ Creativity”, what comes to your mind when you hear such a word? If you are a cartoon addict— like me—, the first thing you may envision is that glowing lamp appearing above the head of genius characters like Jimmy Neutron and Dexter. However, if you are of the realistic type, the first thing to encounter your mind may be creative icons like Picasso and Einstein. With different perspectives, we all agree that creativity can be defined as getting a new, yet dazzling idea or solution for our daily life problems and situations. Actually, we come up with creative ideas more than we imagine.“ Everyday, we use language to speak sentences that have never been spoken before. We express thoughts that have never been expressed. All of this is so deeply ingrained that we don’ t notice how creative it is.” says Art Markman, co-editor of the book“ Tools for Innovation”. These creativity tasks we do are classified by scientists according to their degree of creativity into two main types:“ big-c” creativity, like designing a school experiment out of pepsi cans, and“ little-c” creativity like improvising a funny joke for your friends.
Creative icons— like Einstein— are known to have higher IQ( Intelligence Quotient) levels than ordinary people, but are their brains wired differently? In an attempt to discover the correlation between creativity levels and brain connections, a group of scientists in Harvard university made a study on 163 volunteers using the“ Divergent thinking” test, a test which assesses the ability of brainstorming and deciding on unconventional ideas and solutions with originality for a particular problem. For instance, if I asked each reader of this article about nontraditional uses of a plastic cup, one may simply suggest using it as a container, while the other might propose making a plastic cup phone out of it. According to the test, the first person’ s idea shall be graded“ low”, as it lacks authenticity. On the contrary, the second one’ s gets a“ high” rank, as it“ diverges” from the traditional use of the cup. Similarly, scientists conducted the test on volunteers in fMRI( Functional magnetic resonance imaging) to discover the connection among different brain lobes and correlate them with test results. These brain connections were therefore called“ High-creative” network, and they were found to be stronger in people getting high grades on the“ Divergent thinking” test.
“ EVERYDAY, WE USE LANGUAGE TO SPEAK SENTENCES THAT HAVE NEVER BEEN SPOKEN BEFORE. WE EXPRESS THOUGHTS THAT HAVE NEVER BEEN EXPRESSED. ALL OF THIS IS SO DEEPLY INGRAINED THAT WE DON’ T NOTICE HOW CREATIVE IT IS.”— ART MARKMAN