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Updated: May 26, 2025
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Modeling the Functional Network for Spatial Navigation in the Human Brain
Published on: October 13, 2023
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Perceptual and semantic maps in individual humans share structural features that predict creative abilities
Johannes P-H Seiler1, Jonas Elpelt2,3, Aida Ghobadi4
1Institute of Physiology, Focus Program Translational Neurosciences, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany. johseile@uni-mainz.de.
Communications Psychology
|February 24, 2025
Summary
This study reveals that the structure of auditory and semantic representations in the brain correlates with creativity. These shared representational features predict individual creative abilities, suggesting a link between representational geometry and creative thought.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psychophysics
Background:
- Associative links between internal representations are crucial for knowledge structuring and creative behavior.
- Representational similarity is thought to reflect associative linkages across sensory and semantic levels.
- Previous research linked semantic map structures to human creativity, but lower-level perceptual map links were unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if structural features of perceptual (auditory) representational maps correlate with those of semantic maps.
- To determine if these shared representational features predict individual creativity.
- To explore the role of modality-overarching representational geometry in creative thought.
Main Methods:
- 148 human participants completed psychophysical scaling tasks with distinct auditory and semantic stimuli.
- Graph-theoretical measures were used to quantify individual representational map features.
- Verbal standard measures of creativity were employed to assess creative abilities.
Main Results:
- A robust correlation was found between representational structures in the perceptual auditory and semantic domains.
- Shared representational features in both modalities significantly predicted measures of creativity.
- Both semantic and auditory representational features were found to reflect creative abilities.
Conclusions:
- The structure of representational maps is shared across different sensory and semantic levels.
- Modality-overarching representational geometry is a significant underpinning of creative thought.
- This suggests a general neural basis for creativity that transcends specific sensory modalities.
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