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Academia Mexicana de Neurología, A.C.

2006, Number 5

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Rev Mex Neuroci 2006; 7 (5)

Creativity and cerebral function

Escobar A, Gómez-González B

Language: Spanish
References: 27
Page: 391-399
PDF size: 108.89 Kb.


ABSTRACT

Creativity constitutes one of the essential cognitive functions in the human brain. Creativity is the norm in human beings, and develops in almost all mental activities. All human beings are potentially creative, as it is seen by the fact that every one is capable of creating appropriate words in a normal congruent conversation. Creativity may possess a variable relevance; originality in a creation requires a wealth of knowledge, to posses a culture, technological or intellectual, sound reasoning, good working memory, and a rich language, all that leading to associate the ideas necessary to create a novel concept. In other words, creativity is not a gift doled out by the gods; it must be called up from within us through training and encouragement. That explains why creativity comes up easily in some people, while others struggle. A concise unambiguous definition of creativity may be stated as follows: Creativity is the cerebral function that associates, analyzes, and interprets the wealth of knowledge to generate novel ideas beneficial to oneself or to the mankind. The study of brain lesions in the past, led to a partial understanding of how the brain participates in the process of creativity. Modern neuroimaging technology, such as functional magnetic resonance and positron emission tomography, as well as electroencephalography, have contributed to clarify where in the brain those creative sparks originate. It is known that participating structures include the neocortex and paleocortex, subcortical structures such as the amygdala, diencephalic (thalamus and hypothalamus), all those part of the limbic system; also participating brain stem nuclei, namely the reticular formation to maintain normal consciousness and attentive states essential to creativity, and other autonomic nuclei to maintain the associate visceral functions. Mention must be made of the commonly held, but still controversial, belief that most creative individuals owe their creativity to possessing abnormal mental traits, to a substratum of psychopathology; hence psychiatric entities such as schizophrenia, bipolar, monopolar and major depressions, autistic conundrum, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have been considered. Manifest abnormal behavioral patterns that affect social life have also been linked to creative individuals. Some of those studies have shown a clear-cut link between manic-depressive psychosis to creative individuals and to their close family members; however, in other studies the findings show similar psychopathology data in the general population. So far the controversy has not been clarified.


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