The creative brain--revisiting concepts.

Creativity is a complex neuro-psycho-philosophical phenomenon which is difficult to define literally. Fundamentally it involves the ability to understand and express novel orderly relationships. The creative process involves four stages--preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. A high level of general intelligence, domain specific knowledge and special skills are necessary pre-requisites. It is possible that in addition, some creative people might have architectural alternations of specific portions of the posterior neocortex. Associated with such pre-requisites, the process of creative innovation (incubation and illumination stages) necessitates the need for an ability of divergent thinking, a novelty seeking behavior, some degree of suppression of latent inhibition and a subtle degree of frontal dysfunction. The author hypothesizes that these features are often inter-linked and subtle frontally disinhibited behavior is conducive towards creativity by allowing uninterrupted flow of creative thought possessing and opening up new avenues towards problem solving. Perhaps the most essential feature of the creative brain is its degree of connectivity--both inter-hemispheric and intra-hemispheric. Connectivity correlates or binds together functions of apparently structurally isolated domains on brain modules sub-serving different functions. It is felt that creative cognition is a self rewarding process where divergent thinking would promote connectivity through development of new synapses. In addition, the phenomenon of synaesthesia has often been observed in creative visual artists. Creative innovation often occurs during low arousal states and creative people often manifests features of affective disorders. This suggests a role of neurotransmitters in creative innovation. Dopaminergic pathways are involved in the novelty seeking attitude of creative people while norepinephrine levels are depressed during discovery of novel orderly relationships. The relationship between mood and catecholamines and that of creative cognition is often in an inverted U-shaped form. It is hypothesized that that subtle frontal dysfunction is a pre-requisite for creative cognition but here again the relationship is also in an inverted U-form. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.