Using Neuroscience to Image the Creative Brain

The nature and sources of creativity have intrigued people for many years. During the early phases of this effort, people relied on anecdotal or historical accounts, but in the twentieth century the emphasis shifted to empirical studies. Assuming that high intelligence (“genius”) was associated with creativity, investigators relied on IQ tests to select subjects for study. In the mid-twentieth century the emphasis shifted to custom-designed tests that assessed more specific components of creative thinking. With the development of neuroscientific methods and neuroimaging, the emphasis has shifted to include methods that directly measure brain activity, based on the assumption that creative ideas are the product of brain activity.