Failing to deactivate: the association between brain activity during a working memory task and creativity

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Working memory (WM) is crucial for higher cognitive functions.
• Creativity is vital for human progress, yet its neural basis remains underexplored.
• Prior research suggests a potential inverse relationship between WM capacity and creativity, possibly due to attention differences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between brain activity during working memory tasks and individual creativity.
• To explore how functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data during a working memory paradigm correlates with creativity measures.

Main Methods:

• Employed an n-back working memory task and a divergent thinking test to measure creativity.
• Utilized fMRI to analyze brain activity patterns in participants during the working memory tasks.
• Performed multiple regression analysis to correlate creativity scores with brain activity.

Main Results:

• Found a significant positive correlation between individual creativity and brain activity in the precuneus during the 2-back (working memory) task.
• Observed no significant correlation during the 0-back (non-working memory) task.
• Demonstrated that reduced task-induced deactivation (TID) in the precuneus is associated with higher creativity.

Conclusions:

• Higher creativity, as measured by divergent thinking, is associated with greater brain activity in the precuneus during working memory tasks.
• This finding suggests that reduced deactivation in the precuneus (part of the default mode network) correlates with creativity.
• The results support the hypothesis that inefficient attention reallocation, characterized by diffuse attention, may underlie individual creativity.