Neuroimaging Research

The neuroimaging study of creativity is in its early stages but some direction is emerging. Perhaps most important is that creative processing doesn't occur within a single brain area, but rather is distributed across many systems. The prefrontal cortex, thalamus, cingulate, and association areas seem to play important roles. The Internet is another example of a distributed system. No one person or system controls it. Rather the interactions of many people and systems continually reshape the Internet's current state.

Our brain is thus a dynamic, distributed, self-organizing system, capable of frequent unpredictable shifts in thinking—and often without any external input. Creativity emerges out of wandering subconscious thoughts that enhance the editing and free association of existing concepts. Such activity inhibits the normal restrictions of reality—our knowledge of what's possible and appropriate. In some respects, this is also what occurs during dreams, when the improbable seems probable.

Andreasen thus suggests that creative thinking probably begins with the free exploration of previously unlinked phenomena. New organizations eventually emerge out of such initial exploration, and this eventually creates original useful cognitive products—a poem, a sculpture, a scientific discovery.