Creativity, Neuroscience and

Neurocognitive Informatics

Włodzisław Duch

Katedra informatyki Stosowanej,

Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń, Poland

Google: W. Duch

Plan

1. Most mysterious thing about the mind …

2. Creativity research: psychology and neuroscience.

3. Intuition and insight.

4. Neurofeedback, EEG & creativity

5. Memory and pair-wise priming.

6. Words in the brain & creation of novel words.

7. Dementia and art.

8. Creation of ideas, mental models.

9. Creativity research – what can we do?

Mysterious mind …

What features of our brain/minds are most mysterious?

Consciousness? Imagination? Intuition? Emotions, feelings? Thinking?

Masao Ito (director of RIKEN, neuroscientist) answered: creativity.

MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences (2001) has 1100 pages.

6 chapters about logics & over 100 references to logics in the index.

Creativity: 1 page (+1 page about „creative person”).

Intuition: 0, not even mentioned in the index.

In everyday life we use intuition and creativity more often than logics.

• Kenneth M. Heilman, Creativity and the Brain, Psychology Press 2005

• Mario Tokoro & Ken Mogi (Sony Labs), Creativity and the Brain, 2007.

• Duch W, Creativity and the Brain, W: A Handbook of Creativity for Teachers. Ed. Ai-Girl Tan, Singapore: World Scientific 2007, pp. 507-530

How to define creativity? Bink & Marsh (2001): the number of definitions of „creativity” is equal to the number of researchers that study this subject.

Sternberg (ed. Handbook of Human Creativity, 1998): „the capacity to create a solution that is both novel and appropriate”, not only in creation of novel theories or inventions, but also in our everyday actions, language understanding, interactions.

Encyclopedia of creativity (Elsevier, 2005), eds. M. Runco & S. Pritzke,

167 articles, but no testable models of creativity have been proposed.

Journals:

Creativity Research Journal, from 1988, LEA.

Journal of Creative Behavior, from 1967, Creative Education Foundation.

Many connections with research in:

general intelligence, IQ tests, genius, special gifts, idiot savant syndrome

and psychopathologies, intuition, insight (Eureka or Aha!), discovery ...

Psychology of creativity

G. Wallas, The art of thought (1926): four-stage Gestalt

model of problem solving.

4 stages: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification.

Stages identified in creative problem solving by individuals and small

groups of people; additional stages may be added:

finding or noticing a problem, proposing interesting questions, frustration

period preceding illumination, communication following verification etc.

Understanding details of such stages and sequences yielding creative

productions is a central issue for creativity research, but is it sufficient?

Poincare (1948): math intuition and creativity is a discrimination between

promising and useless ideas and their combinations; math thinking may be

based on heuristic search among sufficiently rich representations. Math

intuition is an interplay between spatial imagination, abstraction and

approximate reasoning, and analytical reasoning or visual-spatial and

linguistic thinking. This is observed in fMRI imaging (S. Dehaene, 1999).

Intuition

Intuition is also a concept difficult to grasp, but commonly

believed to play important role in business and other decision

making; „knowing without being able to explain how we know”.

Sinclair & Ashkanasy (2005): intuition is a „non-sequential information-

processing mode, which comprises both cognitive and affective elements

and results in direct knowing without any use of conscious reasoning”.

First tests of intuition were introduced by Wescott (1961), now 3 tests are

used, Rational-Experiential Inventory (REI), Myers-Briggs Type Inventory

(MBTI) and Accumulated Clues Task (ACT).

Different intuition measures are not correlated, showing problems in

constructing theoretical concept of intuition. Significant correlations were

found between REI intuition scale and some measures of creativity.

Intuition may result from implicit learning of complex similarity-based

evaluation that are difficult to express in symbolic (logical) way.

Intuition in chess has been studied in details.

Insights and brains Activity of the brain while solving problems that required insight and that

could be solved in schematic, sequential way has been investigated.

E.M. Bowden, M. Jung-Beeman, J. Fleck, J. Kounios, „New approaches to

demystifying insight”. Trends in Cognitive Science 2005.

After solving a problem presented in a verbal way subjects indicated

themselves whether they had an insight or not.

An increased activity of the right hemisphere anterior superior temporal

gyrus (RH-aSTG) was observed during initial solving efforts and insights.

About 300 ms before insight a burst of gamma activity was observed,

interpreted by the authors as „making connections across distantly related

information during comprehension ... that allow them to see connections

that previously eluded them”.

Insight interpreted

What really happens? My interpretation:

• LH-STG represents concepts, S=Start, F=final

• understanding, solving = transition, step by step, from S to F

• if no connection (transition) is found this leads to an impasse;

• RH-STG ‘sees’ LH activity on meta-level, clustering concepts into

abstract categories (cosets, or constrained sets);

• connection between S to F is found in RH, leading to a feeling of vague

understanding;

• gamma burst increases the activity of LH representations for S, F and

intermediate configurations;

• stepwise transition between S and F is found;

• finding solution is rewarded by emotions during Aha! experience;

they are necessary to increase plasticity and create permanent links.

EEG and creativity How to increase cooperation between distant

brain areas important for creativity?

John H. Gruzelier (Imperial College), SAN President

a-q neurofeedback produced “professionally significant

performance improvements” in music and dance students.

Neurofeedback and heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback.

benefited performance in different ways.

Musicality of violin music students was enhanced; novice singers from

London music colleges after ten sessions over two months learned

significantly within and between session the EEG self-regulation of q/a ratio.

The pre-post assessment involved creativity measures in improvisation,

a divergent production task, and the adaptation innovation inventory.

Support for associations with creativity followed improvement in creativity

assessment measures of singing performance.

Why? Low frequency waves = easier synchronization between distant

areas; parasite oscillations decrease.

Memory & creativity

Creative brains accept more incoming stimuli from the surrounding

environment (Carson 2003), with low levels of latent inhibition responsible

for filtering stimuli that were irrelevant in the past.

“Zen mind, beginners mind” (S. Suzuki) – learn to avoid habituation!

Complex representation of objects and situations kept in creative minds.

Pair-wise word association technique may be used to probe if a connection

between different configurations representing concepts in the brain exists.

A. Gruszka, E. Nęcka, Creativity Research Journal, 2002.

Words may be close (easy) or distant (difficult) to connect;

priming words may be helpful or neutral;

helpful words are either semantic or phonological (hogse for horse);

neutral words may be nonsensical or just not related to the presented pair.

Results for groups of people who are less/highly creative are surprising …

Word 1 Priming 0,2 s Word 2

Creativity & associations

Hypothesis: creativity depends on the associative memory, ability to connect distant concepts together.

Results: creativity is correlated with greater ability to associate words & susceptibility to priming, distal associations show longer latencies before decision is made.

Neutral priming is strange!

• for close words and nonsensical priming words creative people do worse

than less creative; in all other cases they do better.

• for distant words priming always increases the ability to find association,

the effect is strongest for creative people.

Latency times follow this strange patterns.

Conclusions of the authors:

More synaptic connections => better associations => higher creativity.

Results for neutral priming are puzzling.

Words in the brain

The cell assembly model of language has strong experimental

support; F. Pulvermuller (2003) The Neuroscience of Language.

On Brain Circuits of Words and Serial Order. Cambridge University Press.

Acoustic signal => phonemes => words => semantic concepts.

Semantic activations are seen 90 ms after phonological in N200 ERPs.

Phonological density of words = # words that sound similar to a given word,

that is create similar activations in phonological areas.

Semantic density of words = # words that have similar meaning, or similar

extended activation network.

Perception/action

networks, results

from ERP & fMRI.

Paired associations

So why neutral priming for close associations and

nonsensical priming words degrades results of creative people?

High creativity = many connections between microcircuits; nonsensical

words add noise, increasing activity between many circuits; in a densely

connected network adding noise creates confusion, the time need for

decision is increased because the system has to settle in specific attractor.

If creativity is low and associations distant noise does not help because

there are no connections, priming words contribute only to chaos.

Nonsensical words increase overall activity in the intermediate configura-

tions. For creative people resonance between distant microcircuits is

possible: this is called stochastic resonance, observed in perception.

For priming words with similar spelling and close words the activity of the

second word representation is higher, always increasing the chance of

connections and decreasing latency. For distant words it will not help, as

intermediate configurations are not activated.

Words: simple model

Goals:

• make the simplest testable model of creativity;

• create interesting novel words that capture some features of products;

• understand new words that cannot be found in the dictionary.

Model inspired by the putative brain processes when new words are being

invented. Start from keywords priming auditory cortex.

Phonemes (allophones) are resonances, ordered activation of phonemes

will activate both known words as well as their combinations; context +

inhibition in the winner-takes-most leaves one or a few words.

Creativity = space+imagination (fluctuations) + filtering (competition)

Imagination: many chains of phonemes activate in parallel both words and

non-words reps, depending on the strength of synaptic connections.

Filtering: associations, emotions, phonological/semantic density.

Words: experiments A real letter from a friend:

I am looking for a word that would capture the following qualities: portal to

new worlds of imagination and creativity, a place where visitors embark on

a journey discovering their inner selves, awakening the Peter Pan within.

A place where we can travel through time and space (from the origin to the

future and back), so, its about time, about space, infinite possibilities.

FAST!!! I need it sooooooooooooooooooooooon.

creativital, creatival (creativity, portal), used in creatival.com

creativery (creativity, discovery), creativery.com (strategy+creativity)

discoverity = {disc, disco, discover, verity} (discovery, creativity, verity)

digventure ={dig, digital, venture, adventure} still new!

imativity (imagination, creativity); infinitime (infinitive, time)

infinition (infinitive, imagination), already a company name

portravel (portal, travel); sportal (space, sport, portal), taken

timagination (time, imagination); timativity (time, creativity)

tivery (time, discovery); trime (travel, time)

Server at: http://www-users.mat.uni.torun.pl/~macias/mambo

Humanized interface

dialogue systems

Store

Applications, eg.

word games, puzzles,

creativity

Query

Semantic memory

Parser

Part of speech tagger

& phrase extractor

On line dictionaries

Manual

verification

Creativity in dementia? • Bruce L. Miller, Craig E. Hou, Emergence of Visual Creativity in

Dementia. Arch Neurol. 61, 842-844, 2004.

Miller et al (UCSF) describe a series of patients with frontotemporal

dementia who acquired new artistic abilities despite evidence of

deterioration in the left anterior temporal lobe.

Good memory is common with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Simple

copying is typically preserved, some patients with FTD develop a new

interest in painting, their artistic productivity can increase despite

progression of the dementia.

The artwork is approached in a compulsive manner and is often realistic or

surrealistic in style.

Why? Is it a disinhibition effect?

Negation of linguistic concepts that block visual creativity?

Slow “rewiring” of the cortex? Paradoxical functional compensation?

Relation to TMS & savant syndrome studies (A. Snyder, MindLab Sydney).

Commercial break Is creativity based on unconstrained imagination, no rules?

No! Anarchist type of methods encouraging unstructured approach fail

(including free associations, brainstorming, random stimulation or lateral

thinking)! Structured approaches, based on higher-order rules and

templates, lead to excellent results; see:

Goldenberg, Mazursky & Solomon, Science 285, 1999.

J. Goldenberg & D. Mazursky, Creativity in Product Innovation, CUP 2002

270 possible traits (T) were collected from adds in magazines;

900 symbols (S) that people associated with these traits were collected.

3-4 most frequent symbols were finally selected for each trait.

Replacement schema for advertising of product P:

1. Define the relevant trait T for a given product P.

2. List symbols S that completely and unquestionably invoke T.

3. Construct P-space of objects that are strongly correlated with P.

4. Substitute an aspect A of one of the objects in place of the corresponding

aspect of S.

Replacement scheme Task: create advertisement for Nike air shoes.

Product P = Nike air shoes

Trait T: “cushioning and absorbing the shocks” caused by jumping.

Symbol S that invokes T: life net for fire victims jumping from a burning

building.

Replace S with P.

Result: propose advertisement:

firemen holding a giant shoe!

Ideas generated by the automated routine were presented to judges, along

with ideas on the same theme appearing in magazine ads and advertising

ideas generated by layman individuals.

Magazine ads: 2.880.55, templates 2.890.48, laymens 2.220.43

Winning adds: 3.26 0.49

Some speculations How to increase spatial coherence in the brain?

Neurofeedback, or even simpler, “mantra” meditation.

Simplifies neurodynamics, stops many weaker processes that pop-up.

Role of neurotransmiters in creativity?

Creative people store extensive specialized knowledge in temporoparietal

cortex, but may switch to divergent thinking, distant associations typical for

parietal system, by modulation of the frontal lobe - locus coeruleus

(norepinephrine) system.

Frontal lobes are involved in working memory, divergent thinking, control of

the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system.

Low levels of norepinephrine => increase synchrony, large distributed

activations across brain areas, creation of novel concepts.

High levels of norepinephrine (mostly from locus coeruleus), more precise

memory recall, localized activations.

Mental models

Easy reasoning A=>B, B=>C, so A=>C

• All mammals suck milk.

• Humans are mammals.

• => Humans suck milk.

... but almost no-one can draw conclusion from:

• All academics are scientist.

• No wise men is an academic.

• What can we say about wise men and scientists?

Surprisingly only ~10% of students get it right, all kinds of errors!

No simulations explaining why some mental models are difficult?

Creativity: non-schematic thinking?

What can we do? • Use neurofeedback & TMS in arts?

• Use other mental training techniques increasing coherence?

• Use Loreta – low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography.

• Novel analysis of global EEG state, for brain-computer interfaces and neurofeedback? Complexity-based neurofeedback?

• Understand priming, schematic thinking, decision making, through computer simulations; educational implications.

• Detailed neural model of creating novel words; comparison of human and

machine-generated results; a well defined domain, experimental research

using EEG, ERP, fMRI and other techniques are possible.

• Imagination and filtering – creativity in other domains, although

conceptual structures, knowledge representation and filtering are harder

to implement.

Thank

you

for

lending

your

ears

...

Google: Duch => Papers, Talks,

Lecture notes