The neuroscience of creativity: are creative geniuses born or made? JULIE HOEFLINGER
Stroke of genius
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n an unsuspecting day in 1985, Alfred Schnittke, a famous 20th century Russian composer, suffered from a potentially career-ending stroke. Strokes can be devastating to cognitive functioning as they temporarily cut off blood supply to the brain causing tissue death. This can result in numerous debilitating deficits including paralysis and depression, all of which can severely interfere with day-to-day life. However, Schnittke reported something completely inexplicable following his injury: he insisted that the stroke had amplified his creativity. In fact, Schnittke became more prolific than ever, composing works that would become some of the most celebrated pieces of classical music during his time. There are myriad similar cases in which writers, musicians, and artists of all kinds continue to produce creative works following brain injury, as well as non-artists who picked up a newfound interest in the arts following brain injury. Emergent creative talent has been well documented in age-related degenerative brain diseases, particularly frontotemporal dementia, which is a form of dementia that predominantly impacts behavior and language. However, understanding what parts of the brain are involved in the processes underlying creativity remains elusive. Many of us have been led to believe that some people are born “right-brained,” or more creative, and others are born “leftbrained,” or more analytical, and this limiting belief still lingers in public discourse today. But if creative spurts can occur later in life, especially after brain damage has occurred, then the notion that creative ability is written into the blueprint of our genes is implausible.
What is creativity? It’s difficult to study creativity if we don’t have a grasp on exactly what it means. Although the definition varies and has shifted
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considerably over the years, a consistently agreed upon characteristic is novelty. This is the primary defining characteristic of a creative idea: the idea must be new in some way. A “novel” or “original” idea is defined as something that you don’t come across frequently or ever. But just because something is new does not make it creative. There must be context to this newness; it can’t be completely random. Therefore, another factor of creativity is an idea’s “appropriateness, relevance, or fit,”. In other words, it must be useful, meaningful, or valuable in some way. To build on our definition of creativity, something is deemed creative if it “is a novel work that is accepted as… useful or satisfying by a group in some point in time”. However, there is much debate about whether these two criteria are sufficient in labeling something as vague as creativity. Regardless, the consensus is that creativity is generating something that is fresh and meaningful in some way.
"Recent studies have found that creativity is more strongly linked with personality traits such as openness to experience and emotional intelligence than with particular brain areas. "
Where is creativity found in the brain? Tracking creativity in the brain is no easy task. Early studies pointed to the idea that the right hemisphere of the brain is more involved in creative tasks, thus engendering the myth
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