Community structure of the creative brain at rest

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Network Science

Background:

• Inter-individual differences in creative thinking are increasingly studied through large-scale brain network organization.
• Previous research focused on local (region-level) and global brain network features.
• The relationship between creative thinking and mesoscale network features, such as community and hub organization, remains largely unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between mesoscale brain network organization (community and hub structure) and individual differences in creative thinking.
• To examine how the co-assignment of brain regions to communities and the hubness of specific brain regions relate to creative capacity.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a data-driven approach on resting-state functional imaging data from a large participant sample.
• Computed co-assignment probabilities of brain regions to communities for each participant.
• Identified network hubs using participation coefficients based on participant-specific community structures.

Main Results:

• Greater creative thinking capacity correlated with increased co-assignment within medial-temporal regions and decreased co-assignment within subcortical regions.
• Increased hubness in the default mode network (DMN) was positively associated with creative ability.
• Increased hubness in medial-temporal regions was negatively associated with creative ability.

Conclusions:

• Mesoscale brain network organization, specifically community and hub structure, is associated with individual differences in creative thinking.
• Creative capacity may be reflected in the inter-individual variability of community interactions within medial-temporal and subcortical brain structures.
• Investigating mesoscale brain network features offers a promising avenue for understanding the neural underpinnings of creativity.