Neuroscientist Rex Jung uses neuroimaging to discover the origins and processes behind human creativity.

by Luke Frank

 

Imagine if your creativity had no limits. The possibilities of what you could conceive would be endless. Where might humankind be without the combined power of creativity, intelligence, and personality? Would we have gone to the moon?

For some, creativity seems to come effortlessly; for others it takes concerted effort. Rex Jung, an associate professor at UNM School of Medicine's Department of Neurosurgery and research scientist at the Mind Research Network (MRN), was awarded a three-year, $600,000 grant in 2007 from the John Templeton Foundation to investigate why creativity appears in different forms in different people.

A natural adjunct to Jung's widely respected work using advanced neuroimaging to study human intelligence, he now is making inroads to the origins and processes behind human creativity. "Can we locate creativity centers and networks in the human brain?" Jung asks. "Is human creativity domain-specific -- different for the visual arts, hard sciences, or mathematics -- or is there a 'creativity network' in the brain that applies across all disciplines?"

"There has been no systematic study of the neurological correlates associated with the creative process," Jung says. "Numerous individual studies exist, but we are attempting to get at the heart of how creativity is manifested in the brain of all people, in a coordinated manner. There are numerous and significant societal benefits to understanding and nurturing creativity."

Jung has begun and will continue to examine several distinct areas of research: How and where is creativity manifested in the brain? Are we all creative or only a special few? How can individual creative capacity be fostered and developed? Are creativity and intelligence linked in any meaningful way?

There are three distinct groups of people for Jung's research: visual artists, scientists, and "normal" control subjects. "We want to investigate groups of people who use their brains in a more divergent, creative way on a day-to-day basis," Jung says, "as well as people who are using their brains in 'regular' ways. We'll use both structural and functional imaging to compare brain traits, like size, tissue volume and composition, chemistry and connectivity."

 

Understanding Creativity
The notion of "genius" has always brought to mind a highly intelligent, highly creative individual -- think of Leonardo da Vinci or Marie Curie. Only recently have researchers appreciated that human intelligence might involve strengths different from those that foster creativity. Jung has spent the last 10 years of his career studying human intelligence, and new questions beg his attention. Is there a line in the structure and/or function of the human brain that links creativity to, or separates it from, intelligence? Or do they overlap?

While intelligence is a highly adaptive quality of the brain, allowing us to solve problems in the environment quickly and correctly, Jung offers that creativity is the quality of human existence that allows us to modify the environment to our needs to make something new and useful. While this might seem like a subtle distinction, it has profound implications: one is more reactive while the other is invariably proactive.

"This is where personality factors really begin to play a big part in creative success, as an individual must push ideas forward, usually in the face of opposition from the environment," Jung explains. "Environmental constraints might include a lack of resources; societal constraints could be a lack of acceptance."

In the context of scientific discovery, creativity refers to the production of something both novel and useful within a given social context. "Essentially, creativity is the productive free-flow of ideas sufficiently structured to efficiently pinpoint a best solution," Jung says. "Where are the brain centers and networks that generate such creative productivity?"

 

The Neuroanatomy of Creativity
According to Jung, his would be the first study linking structural measures in the brain to psychometric measures of creativity in a normal, healthy cohort. He defined his initial research tasks as: administration of psychometrically valid and established measures of intelligence, personality and creativity to a large sample of healthy subjects; undertaking the first structural magnetic resonance imaging study linking constructs central to creativity to cortical thickness; and linking results to previous studies across neuro-scientific, behavioral neurology, and psychometric literatures.

More than one hundred University of New Mexico students were recruited and qualified for the study. They were asked to complete the Creative Achievement Questionnaire, an established measure of creativity that includes visual arts, music, creative writing, architecture, humor, scientific discovery, and four other measures. Subjects were also administered tests of "divergent thinking" -- extrapolating "new and useful" responses to common stimuli (e.g., name all of the creative ways you can think of to use a pencil). From these responses a score called a composite creativity index is derived. They also were scanned in a 3Tesla structural MRI machine.

Results were compared to brain structural measures, with the imaging focused on the cortical results. "We found in several discrete clusters an indication of decreased cortical thickness in relation to higher creativity," Jung asserts. "This network, however, was not limited to one lobe nor one hemisphere of the brain."

"These inverse relationships between cortical thickness and creativity measures speak to the possible importance of efficient information flow among brain areas," Jung says. "We believe that the generation of novel, original ideas is associated with less cortical thickness within frontal and specific posterior cortical regions."

Last year, the Journal of Human Brain Mapping reported Jung's initial research findings in a paper titled "Neuroanatomy of Creativity."

 

Positive Neuroscience
Jung's creativity research is part of the Positive Neuroscience Initiative at the Mind Research Network on UNM's North Campus, developed to address issues of mental health and individual differences in human behavior that provide positive benefits to society. According to Jung, Positive Neuroscience is the study of what the brain does well under the combined auspices of intelligence, creativity, and personality.

Jung has spent the past 10 years studying human intelligence; the last several at the MRN, one of the most sophisticated neuroimaging facilities in the world. Jung's imaging work with MR Spectroscopy, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, fMRI, and other technologies has revealed important differences in male and female cognitive processing that ultimately could affect mental health diagnoses and treatments, and prevention of brain injuries and diseases.

Recently, Jung and colleague Rich Haier, with the University of California at Irvine, introduced the Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT) of Intelligence, which identifies a very discreet network of gray and white matter in the human brain that predicts performance on intelligence tests. These two researchers believe that the P-FIT Theory will become the model on which future human intelligence research will be based.

"P-FIT is the first testable, physical model of where in the human brain intelligence resides, and what neural factors might result in improved cognitive performance," says Jung. "Intelligence is not located in one place in the brain, nor is it everywhere in the brain. It spans a very discrete but identifiable network."

 

Pinning Down Personality?
His initial work in human intelligence and current work in creativity could lead Jung down the path to exploring human personality, completing a personal trifecta in investigating Positive Neuroscience.

"Creativity is a critically important human undertaking, involving playfulness with ideas, potential risk of failure or rejection, and ultimately confidence in the underlying value of an idea to change others' lives in a positive way," Jung adds. "Humans find meaning in life when allowed to cultivate and express their individuality through creative outlets."

"Moreover, it's vitally important that we understand how the brain is put together and functioning well to understand what's happening when it begins to unravel," he concludes. "We need to know the brain's capabilities and limits in both a healthy state and in a diseased state."

For more information on the Mind Research Network and Jung's Positive Neuroscience research, visit: www.mrn.org