EEG alpha power during creative ideation of graphic symbols

Abstract

Graphic symbolic creation—transforming abstract concepts into visual forms—is a cognitively complex and uniquely human skill. Neurophysiological evidence suggests that oscillatory alpha activity is correlated with visual-figurative creative thinking. However, whether alpha oscillations play a functional role in generating graphic symbols remains unclear. To address this issue, we compared the EEG alpha power of 40 healthy adults while ideating creative and conventional graphic symbols representing an abstract concept’s meaning (e.g., the word ’peace’). Our results revealed that the ideation of graphic symbols elicited alpha synchronization, with higher levels in the conventional compared to the creative condition, mainly over frontal-central, frontal-temporal, parietal-occipital, and occipital regions. Furthermore, we observed greater alpha synchronization in the right hemisphere than in the left across both conditions, particularly between temporal, central-parietal, and parietal electrodes. This asymmetry extended to central electrodes in the creative condition, while in the conventional condition, it was more pronounced over parietal-occipital regions. Finally, we also found that frontal and occipital alpha synchronization during the creative ideation phase predicted the subsequent originality scores of the graphic symbols produced. Together, these findings enhance our understanding of the dynamics of oscillatory alpha activity during graphic symbol creation, shedding light on how the interaction between inhibitory top-down control mechanisms and cognitive flexibility processes facilitates the transformation of abstract concepts into visual forms. These findings provide new insights into the neural processes underlying this uniquely human ability.