Image: WILLIAM DUKE
In Brief
- People with savant syndrome, who possess great skill in specific areas, seem to have a more literal, less filtered cognitive style than most people.
- A savant may have dysfunction in the normally dominant left hemisphere of the brain, which the right hemisphere compensates for.
- Using noninvasive brain stimulation, scientists are attempting to induce this pattern of brain activity, so as to produce a less filtered cognitive style and to access a different way of looking at a given problem.
A great idea comes all of a sudden. In the depths of the mind, networks of brain cells perform a sublime symphony, and a twinkle of insight pops into consciousness. Unexpected as they are, these lightbulb moments seem impossible to orchestrate. Recent studies suggest otherwise. By freeing the mind of some of its inhibitions, we might improve creative problem solving.
The human brain constantly filters thoughts and feelings. Only a small fraction of the stimuli impressed on us by our environment ascends to the level of conscious awareness. Prior learning enforces mental shortcuts that determine which sensations are deemed worthy of our attention. Our laboratory is investigating whether we can weaken these biases and boost openness to new ideas by temporarily diminishing the neural activity in specific brain areas.
This article was originally published with the title Switching on Creativity.
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2 Comments
Add CommentI have never understood the recognition of creativity in people with savant syndrome. I see where they have profound memory and rote processing abilities, but this is not creativity. And this also seems to apply to musical savants. Are their musical compositions that original?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKim Peek could remember every phone number in a phone book, Einstein could not remember his own phone number.
Probably, the only One who creates is God, what we mankind call creativity may be nothing more tan new combinations of already existing elements. They say also that the threshold for creativity is an IQ of around 128 or above. The good old movie "Forbidden Planet" presents something close in appearance to the procedure you signal for increasing creativity, but in the Sci-Fi tale, the goal is to increase IQ, not just creativity, and the man who goes thru it ends dead, as his brain burned. Electricity is a powerful thing, Cesar Milstein used it to build the Chimeras that were in the origin of the Monoclonal Antibodies that greatly improved medicine, and there is a report of a cure in a case of Leukemia in which the patient received shock waves for urinary stones. A possibility exists tan an electrical discharge may modify a Genome, I even wonder if this can be among the reasons why assisted reproduction generated babies hare more congenital abnormalities than the regularly conceived ones, as an electrical shock is one of the ways to obtain sperm for these purposes; but sincerely, the proposal in Frankenstein of reanimating deads with electro-shock sounds not feasible.
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