Brain Circuit for Creativity Identified

Creativity mapped to a specific brain circuit in healthy people, an analysis of neuroimaging studies suggested.

In a meta-analysis involving 36 studies and 857 healthy participants, 415 brain coordinates were activated by creative tasks, reported Michael Fox, MD, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and co-authors.

The coordinates varied throughout studies. However, 86% of these studies reported coordinates that were part of a common brain circuit defined by negative functional connectivity to the right frontal pole, Fox and colleagues wrote in JAMA Network Open.

This result was consistent across creative domains. It was reproducible in an independent dataset and specific to creativity when compared with random gray matter coordinates or coordinates activated by working memory tasks.

The circuit aligned with lesion-induced effects on creativity and locations of brain atrophy that have been associated with creativity changes in neurodegenerative diseases.

“Although the interpretation of negative functional connections remains debated, negative connections are often observed between brain regions activated by tasks and other brain regions deactivated by tasks,” Fox and colleagues wrote. “Thus, it is possible that creativity tasks activate different brain regions but deactivate a common region in the right frontal pole.”

Reduced right frontal pole activity could align with the hypothesis that suggests creativity requires shutting down a function, noted co-author Isaiah Kletenik, MD, also of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Creativity may rely on inhibiting self-censorship to allow free association and idea generation to flow, Kletenik observed. “To be creative, you may have to turn off your inner critic to allow yourself to find new directions and even make mistakes,” he said in a statement.

“These findings could help explain how some neurodegenerative diseases might lead to decreases in creativity while others may show a paradoxical increase in creativity,” Kletenik added. “It could also potentially add a pathway for brain stimulation to increase human creativity.”

For example, some people with frontotemporal dementia have sparks of visual artistic creativity — new paintings, sculptures, montages, or other works — that emerge around symptom onset. Some with Parkinson’s disease have experienced an increased desire or a new ability to create art.

Previous studies have identified brain regions involved in creativity with varying results, the researchers noted. Other approaches have examined the relationship between creativity and brain network connectivity, but which network — and how that network relates to brain regions activated by creative tasks — remains unclear.

Fox and co-authors analyzed neuroimaging coordinates from a meta-analysis of 36 studies of healthy participants published between 2004 and 2019. The mean age of participants was 24 and 54% were female.

The researchers then used coordinate network mapping and a database of functional connectivity data to identify the brain circuit connected to each set of coordinates, resulting in 36 connectivity maps.

They assessed specificity by comparing the maps to random and working memory coordinates in healthy participants. The researchers reproduced their results in an independent data set and tested whether the coordinates aligned with the effects of focal brain damage on creativity using data from patients with seven different neurodegenerative disorders, including frontotemporal dementia and Parkinson’s.

The findings do not represent the entire neural circuitry involved in creativity, Kletenik emphasized.

“We are learning more about neurodiversity and how brain changes that are considered pathological may improve function in some ways,” he said. “These findings help us better understand how the circuitry of our brains may influence and unleash creativity.”

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