Creative Thought

To Trace a Creative Thought

The structures and processes of creative thought mirror the structures and processes of our neural networks. In creating and learning, the fundamental process is conceptual metaphor, where ideas, like neurons, connect based on matching patterns. The connections exist in clustered networks. What allows the subtle connections needed for novelty is a small amount of randomness within the linking—a...

A Neurocognitive Framework for Human Creative Thought

We are an intensely creative species. Creativity is the fountainhead of our civilizations and a defining characteristic of what makes us human. But for all its prominence at the apex of human mental faculties, we know next to nothing about how brains generate creative ideas. With all previous attempts to tighten the screws on this vexed problem unsuccessful - right brains, divergent thinking, d...

Creative Connectivity: The Purpose of Thought

Creative Thought as a nonDarwinian Evolutionary Process

Selection theory requires multiple, distinct, simultaneously-actualized states. In cognition, each thought or cognitive state changes the ‘selection pressure’ against which the next is evaluated; they are not simultaneously selected amongst. Creative thought is more a matter of honing in a vague idea through redescribing successive iterations of it from different real or imagined perspectives; ...

Evaluative and generative modes of thought during the creative process

Psychological theories have suggested that creativity involves a twofold process characterized by a generative component facilitating the production of novel ideas and an evaluative component enabling the assessment of their usefulness. The present study employed a novel fMRI paradigm designed to distinguish between these two components at the neural level. Participants designed book cover illu...