The right brain and creativity - summary of the scientific article

New studies carried out at the Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University prove: the right brain plays a decisive role in creative thinking

Prof. Miriam Faust

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In the picture: a two-color map describing the level of brain activity in the brain. The yellow color reflects brain activity in the gray processing of word pairs associated with a new metaphorical connection and the blue color reflects brain activity in the gray processing of word pairs associated with a familiar, routine connection. Regarding new connections, more activity can be seen (in three cross-sections of the brain) in the right lobe of the brain in the area corresponding to the classical language areas in the left lobe (Bruca's area - the location of the red cross), while for common and familiar connections, more activity can be seen in the left lobe.


A message on behalf of Bar Ilan University:

A team of researchers led by Prof. Miriam Faust from the Center for Brain Research and the Department of Psychology at Bar-Ilan University, were able to prove that indeed the right lobe of the brain has unique abilities in activating "bold" creative thinking, which enables finding unusual connections between meanings that lead to problem solving. The results of the study have significant implications in both the practical and theoretical fields.

In a series of studies conducted in the last two years by the team of researchers led by Prof. Fawcett, and which were recently published in a number of international journals, a combination of different techniques was used to investigate the relationship between the brain and creativity. This is by building laboratory simulations of problem solving in English and Hebrew languages, which require creative and unconventional thinking in order to reach a solution.
As mentioned, for the first time there is scientific confirmation for repeated arguments linking the right lobe of the brain with creative thinking. These "myths" have led to the fact that the general public is offered various workshops and classes to increase the activity of the right lobe of the brain, in order to achieve an improvement in artistic, managerial and similar abilities.

It should be noted that another recent study conducted by Nira Mashal of Bar-Ilan in collaboration with Dr. Thelma Hendler and the team of the Institute for Functional Magnetic Imaging of the Brain at the Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov), confirms the findings of the study. Through "photographing" the brain during action, a unique-significant level of metabolic activity was found in the right brain, compared to the left, when performing tasks that require the activation of creative thinking. That is, identifying meaning connections between words that are perceived as unrelated.
These studies, which combine behavioral techniques as well as techniques that directly measure brain activity, support, for the first time, directly, the connection between the right brain and the activation of creative thinking processes even when it comes to processing verbal stimuli for which the left brain usually has an absolute advantage. Although this relationship still requires substantiation in more extensive contexts of creative thinking, the studies constitute a first step on the subject which may have important consequences regarding the understanding of the mechanisms of creative thinking in humans. In follow-up studies, the question of whether people who differ in their creative abilities differ in the patterns of brain activity when dealing with problems that require the activation of creative thinking and whether the "division of work" between the right lobe and the left lobe of the brain in solving problems is different in people with different levels of creative abilities. If a connection is indeed found between creative abilities and the model of brain activity during real-time execution of tasks such as those described here, it may be possible to know in advance the level of creativity of a person seeking to be accepted, for example, for a certain position, by the model of brain activity that he shows in a test based on these assignments.

Summary of the article:

Repeated arguments associate the right brain, that is, the activity of the right lobe of the brain, with creative thinking. These "myths" have led to the public being offered various workshops and classes that are supposed to teach how to increase the activation of the right lobe of the brain in order to achieve an improvement in artistic, managerial, etc. abilities. Although these claims about the connection between the activity of the right lobe of the brain and creative thinking are quite common, they have no controlled scientific basis. In a series of studies recently published in several international journals, a combination of different techniques was used to investigate the brain-creativity connection by constructing laboratory simulations of solving verbal problems that require the activation of creative thinking. In each study, the responses of the left brain and the right brain to normal and routine logical problems and insight problems that require creative, unconventional thinking to reach a solution were examined. In these studies, which were conducted both in Hebrew and in English, it was repeatedly found that the right brain indeed has unique abilities, which the left brain does not have, to use creative, "bold" thinking to find unusual and unexpected connections between meanings that lead to the solution of the problem. Linking specific patterns of brain activity with creative thinking has broad theoretical and practical implications.

And for the article in detail:

One of the main challenges in brain research is locating and characterizing the differences in information processing between its various parts and especially between its two halves - the left brain and the right brain. It has been known for about 150 years that in most people, right or left handed, the left lobe of the brain controls language functions, which are usually identified with developed cognitive abilities in general. Accordingly, people who are damaged in the left lobe of their brain lose their verbal abilities to one degree or another, while people who are damaged in the right lobe do not, as a rule, show a noticeable impairment in their verbal function. However, findings from clinical populations as well as laboratory studies with neurologically normal subjects have been accumulated in recent years indicating the importance of the right lobe of the brain in many higher cognitive functions, including certain aspects of language processing. One of the main arguments raised from time to time is that the right brain plays a central role in creative thinking. Based on this argument, courses of "drawing with the help of the right brain" are offered to the public, business workshops that emphasize ways of activating, so to speak, the right brain for management and leadership, etc. Despite the success of these "myths", which attribute to the right brain unique forms of creative thinking, there are almost no controlled scientific findings linking the right brain with creative thinking. The only relevant data available on this subject today indicate that the networks of connections between word meanings are much wider and more flexible in the right lobe of the brain than in the left lobe. Thus, for example, it has been found in behavioral studies that presenting a certain word to laboratory subjects tends to activate a wider and "wilder" network of associations in the right brain than in the left brain, which also includes distant, unexpected, metaphorical and secondary associations. In the left brain, on the other hand, the range of activation of related words is much more limited and mainly includes strong, verbal and main associations. In addition, it was found that in the right brain the arousal of word meanings is maintained for a relatively long time while the left brain hurries to suppress meanings that have arisen and move to new meanings relevant to the current task. These differences between the right lobe and the left lobe of the brain in the range and duration of the preservation of meanings have led to several recent studies in which these abilities have been linked with laboratory simulations of solving problems that require the activation of creative thinking.

In a series of studies conducted by Prof. Miriam Faust in the research corridors of the Psychology Department and the Gonda Multidisciplinary Center for Brain Research at Bar-Ilan University and which were recently published in the journals Neuropsychologia and Cognitive Brain Research, the abilities of the left brain and the right brain to deal with Verbal problems whose solution requires the exercise of insight, that is, the execution of a logical "jump" that requires the exercise of unconventional creative thinking. The research was designed in accordance with the accepted definitions regarding creative thinking and according to which the solution of insight problems requires a reorganization or restructuring of reality, and therefore it requires creative thinking, which is defined as a combination of meanings that were not connected to each other in the past. The farther apart the elements of the new combination are, the more creative the thought process and the product it leads to. These links occur when the creative subject finds similarities between elements whose connection is not obvious and thus succeeds in connecting meanings that other, less creative subjects may fail to see as connected. The new and original system of contexts changes the way in which the problem is perceived and may lead to a different solution than the usual one, and sometimes even to revolutionary discoveries.

In a series of studies, which were based on laboratory simulations for solving insight problems, subjects were asked to perform a wide range of identification and judgment tasks regarding words that were presented following a series of clues that led to them. The series of clues included related words that led in a gradual, easily reproducible logical manner to the desired target words so that an orderly and sequential thought process led to their solution. On the other hand, lists of clues were presented that consisted of different words, the relationship between which is difficult to identify and which led to the target words in an unusual way that requires finding non-obvious connections between their meanings, that is, the exercise of creative and original thinking. For example, in order to reach the ambiguous word "father", the subjects received a series of clues related to the primary ("father") or secondary ("month") meaning of the target word, with each clue providing additional information of the same type that clearly leads and converges to the word ("if , an orphan, a family" or "Tammuz, Kitz, Oona"). In another condition, the subjects received a series of cues consisting alternately of words related in different ways to the multi-meaning target word through its different meanings ("mother, summer, family" or "Tamuz, orphan, season"). Under this condition, in order to identify the connections between the clue words and arrive at their common meaning before knowing what the target word is, one needs to use flexible, diffuse and creative thinking, which will find unexpected connections. The series of cues were presented in the center of a screen while the target words were presented for very short periods of time, less than 150 milliseconds, to the right or left visual field. This technique, known as "lateralization", allows the information to be directed selectively to the left brain, which is neurally connected to the right visual field, or to the right brain, which is neurally connected to the left visual field. The rapid presentation of the stimuli prevents the subjects from looking away and changing the position of the visual fields and thus the brain location where the critical information reaches first.

In these studies that were conducted in Hebrew, with research student Alon Kahana and also in English with Dr. Michal Labidor from the University of Hull in England, the types of tasks, the types of words and the duration of the tasks were changed each time and strong and consistent findings were found regarding the success of the subjects in reaching the target words following different cues. It was found that there was a great advantage for the left brain when the cues led in a gradual logical manner to the target words and especially when they were related to their more prominent meanings. On the other hand, when it was necessary to use creative thinking to arrive at the target words from different directions of meaning, which appear at first glance to be unrelated, the right brain had a great advantage, while the left brain had great difficulty in performing the task. These findings were particularly dramatic because the great advantage of the right brain is found in performing verbal tasks, for which the left brain usually has absolute priority, and this only when the verbal tasks required the activation of creative processes. The advantage of the right brain even increases when more time is given to solve the problem, probably because the extra time increased the chance of overcoming early mental fixations that were created by an immediate search for clear and visible connections and which did not lead to the solution of the insight problems. Likewise, the advantage of the right brain increased when the subject was required to perform a more complex task, which requires the activation of more complex creative processes, such as an overt judgment of connections between words whose meanings are difficult to identify. In another series of studies, conducted in collaboration with Prof. Christine Charlo from the University of California at Riverside, subjects were presented with sentences of different types and had to understand their meaning in order to identify and understand the final words of these sentences that were presented to the right or left visual field separately. It was found that when the subjects were required to understand normal sentences, there was a big advantage for the left brain, as expected in verbal tasks. On the other hand, when they had to understand meanings of unusual sentences that convey messages using original, unusual combinations of words (such as poetry sentences or metaphorical sentences) the right brain had a big advantage. In a study by research student Einat Katz in collaboration with Dr. Avraham Goldstein, these findings were reproduced with the help of a technique of direct measurement of the electrophysiological activity in different brain regions (evoked potentials). Again, it was found that only the right brain has electrical activity that indicates understanding and "acceptance" of sentences that convey meaning with the help of unusual word combinations (as opposed to meaningless sentences, rejected by both cerebral lobes), while the left brain mainly responds to normal sentences.

In another recent study conducted by research student Nira Mashal in collaboration with Dr. Thelma Handler and the staff of the Institute for Functional Magnetic Imaging of the Brain at the Sourasky Medical Center, the level of metabolic activity on the right side was directly tested by "photographing" the brain during action and the left side of the brain when subjects were asked to perform tasks that require the activation of creative thinking, i.e. identifying meaning connections between words perceived, apparently, as unrelated. It was found that when subjects were asked to identify connections between pairs of words taken from pieces of poetry and creating new, unexpected metaphorical expressions, a very unique activity appeared in the areas of the right brain that correspond to the classical language areas of the left brain, that is, in the frontal and parietal lobes. On the other hand, more activity was found in the left brain when the task required identifying clear and direct connections between pairs of words, such as in the case of common metaphorical expressions or familiar verbal combinations.

These studies, which combine behavioral techniques as well as techniques that directly measure brain activity, support, for the first time, directly, the connection between the right brain and the activation of creative thinking processes even when it comes to processing verbal stimuli for which the left brain usually has an absolute advantage. Although this relationship still requires substantiation in more extensive contexts of creative thinking, the studies constitute a first step on the subject which may have important consequences regarding the understanding of the mechanisms of creative thinking in humans. In follow-up studies, the question of whether people who differ in their creative abilities differ in the patterns of brain activity when dealing with problems that require the activation of creative thinking and whether the "division of work" between the right lobe and the left lobe of the brain in solving problems is different in people with different levels of creative abilities. If a connection is indeed found between creative abilities and the model of brain activity during real-time execution of tasks such as those described here, it may be possible to know in advance the level of creativity of a person seeking to be accepted, for example, for a certain position, by the model of brain activity that he shows In a test based on these assignments...

* Prof. Miriam Faust, Department of Psychology and the Gonda Multidisciplinary Center for Brain Research, Bar-Ilan University

The brain savant

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