Abstract
Creativity was a special cognitive capacity which was crucial to human survival and prosperity. Remote associates test (RAT), identifying the relationships among remote ideas, was one of the most frequently used methods of measuring creativity. However, the structural characteristics associated with RAT remains unclear. In the present study, the relationship between gray matter density (GMD)/white matter density (WMD) and RAT was explored using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) in a larger healthy college student sample (144 women and 117 men). Results showed that the score of RAT was significantly positively related with the GMD in the right anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG) and negatively correlated with the GMD in the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). Meanwhile, results also showed that the score of RAT was significantly positively related with the WMD in the right dACC and negatively correlated with the WMD in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). These findings indicate that individual creativity, as measured by the RAT, was mainly related to the regional gray /white matter density of brain regions in the aSTG, dACC and IFG, which might have been involved in the forming of novel combinations, breaking of mental set, monitoring of conflict and semantic integration.
Highlights
Creativity is an important cognitive ability which was crucial to human survival and prosperity (Ashtari and Cyckowski, 2012)
We focused on the convergent thinking measured by the Chinese version of remote association test (RAT) modified from the compound association task (Bowden and Jung-Beeman, 2003) and the structural basis of convergent thinking using the measure of regional gray matter density (rGMD) derived from voxel-based morphometry (VBM) method
The analysis revealed that RAT was significantly positively related with the rWMD in the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and negatively related with the rWMD in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) expended to pars opercularis
Summary
Creativity is an important cognitive ability which was crucial to human survival and prosperity (Ashtari and Cyckowski, 2012). It was considered as the creation of something unusual as well as potentially useful (Rex Eugene Sternberg and Lubart, 1993; Jung et al, 2013). In the convergent thinking task, participants were required to generate single answers to closed-ended problems, such as the Remote Associates Task (Mednick, 1962). Mednick (1962) proposed the associative theory of the Neuroanatomical Correlates of Creativity creative process and developed the remote association test (RAT), assessed the ability to identify relationships among remote ideas, as the form of a test of creative convergent thinking. RAT or similar problems had been widely used in the investigation of insightful problem solving and creative thinking (e.g., Bowers et al, 1990; Schooler and Melcher, 1995; Kihlstrom et al, 1996; Ansburg, 2000; Qiu et al, 2008)
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