Creativity and the Brain
We have lots of ideas of what
creativity is – like the ability to paint a pretty picture or write a poem or
design an experiment. But folks who want
to study creativity in the lab need what’s called an operational definition,
something unambiguous that they can then measure under controlled conditions. That’s
a lot harder to do, and I’ve seen some unhelpful ones, like the sorting paint
chip method that then asks the scientist to figure out which piles of colors
are creative and which piles aren’t. Oy.
Of late, one popular definition of creativity
has been the ability to come up with new and useful ideas, like how to make
dinner based only on what’s in the fridge.
The important terms here are “new” and “useful”. Keep that in mind.
An essay in a recent edition
of The Conversation describes research at Harvard that uses this definition of creativity to study
what’s happening in the brain when someone’s being creative. The scientists put
volunteers in a brain scanning machine and then asked them to come up with novel
and useful ways to use things like gum wrappers or socks.
Think about it for a minute. What’s
a creative way to use socks? What new
and cool thing can you do with gum wrappers. Go ahead. Give it a try. I can
wait.
Do you have some ideas? So did the volunteers. Using socks to warm your feet isn’t “novel”. But using them to filter water is. (And may I say, ewwwww. Hope they’re clean.)
Or you could use socks to dust furniture. Or as potholders. My husband suggests
using wadded up gum wrappers to pack small fragile items, like tiny glass
sculptures. Or arrange different colored ones to make a pretty mosaic. And so
on.
At the same time the
volunteers were thinking up these ideas, the researchers were scanning their
brains and looking for what areas were active. And what they found was really
interesting.
Three brain areas seemed to
be utilized when people are trying to be creative: the default network (usually
active when we’re daydreaming or when our minds are just wandering), the
executive function system (which focuses us on completing a task), and the
salience network (that seems to be involved in switching back and forth between
the other two). It’s like we come up with an idea (default) and then decide
whether it’s a good one or a new one (executive function).
Normally, these areas don’t work
at the same time. But when highly creative people are thinking up new ways to
use socks or gum wrappers, all three activate.
But what does that have to do with REAL creativity, the traditional kind, like creating art? A lot, actually. Further studies showed the
same networks are at work in creative acts as varied as writing poetry, composing music, and creating visual arts. The brains of these people are also activating these three areas. Perhaps the brains of creative people are wired differently than the
rest of us. Or maybe creativity is created. That's a question yet to be answered.
There’s also a dark side to
creativity. Sometimes, people who believe they are creative feel that they are
then entitled to break the rules. Benign
case in point: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing.
In 1968 Spencer Silver, a scientist at 3M, was working on developing a strong and durable adhesive for building aircraft. At one point, he created a very weak adhesive. While it lacked the necessary strength, it had the remarkable qualities of leaving no residue and being reusable. Nonetheless, 3M deemed the product useless, put it aside, and forgot about it.
Years later, Art Fry, a chemical engineer at 3M and church choir member, was frustrated about losing his place in his hymnal. Fry, who’d been aware of Silver’s invention, had an idea: he coated some paper with Silver’s failed adhesive, marked the hymnal pages with the pieces of paper, and then removed the paper after the church service without damaging the pages.
Seeing potential value in the product, Fry reintroduced it to his superiors. They panned the idea, and ordered that he cease working on the project. Nonetheless, Fry defied those orders and continued with the project. He built a machine to produce the Post-it notes, distributing the prototypes to 3M’s secretaries, who loved them. Fry ignored his managers’ requests, used company property without permission, and bypassed the established protocols of the company – all to pursue his idea.
3M eventually saw the product’s value and manufactured it. Post-it notes became wildly successful and profitable: Fry had taken what was considered a useless product and applied it in a unique and useful way. But the story of the Post-it note demonstrates both the positive and the dark sides of creativity. On the one hand, a creative idea resulted in value and profit; on the other, an individual was willing to be intentionally dishonest in order to execute his idea.
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| Art Fry |
