Abstract
Adolescence and early adulthood are developmental time periods during which creative cognition is highly important for adapting to environmental changes. Divergent thinking, which refers to generating novel and useful solutions to open-ended problems, has often been used as a measure of creative cognition. The first goal of this structural neuroimaging study was to elucidate the relationship between gray matter morphology and performance in the verbal (AUT; alternative uses task) and visuo-spatial (CAT; creative ability test) domain of divergent thinking in adolescents and young adults. The second goal was to test if gray matter morphology is related to brain activity during AUT performance. Neural and behavioral data were combined from a cross-sectional study including 25 adolescents aged 15–17 and 20 young adults aged 25–30. Brain-behavior relationships were assessed without a priori location assumptions and within areas that were activated during an AUT-scanner task. Gray matter volume and cortical thickness were not significantly associated with verbal divergent thinking. However, visuo-spatial divergent thinking (CAT originality and fluency) was positively associated with cortical thickness of the right middle temporal gyrus and left brain areas including the superior frontal gyrus and various occipital, parietal, and temporal areas, independently of age. AUT brain activity was not associated with cortical thickness. The results support an important role of a widespread brain network involved in flexible visuo-spatial divergent thinking, providing evidence for a relation between cortical thickness and visuo-spatial divergent thinking in adolescents and young adults. However, studies including visuo-spatial divergent thinking tasks in the scanner are warranted.
Highlights
Creativity is generally defined as the generation of new ideas, insights or problem solutions that are original, useful and of a particular level of difficulty [1]
The current study investigated the relationship between gray matter morphology and divergent thinking in the verbal and visuo-spatial domain in adolescence and early adulthood, as this is a time period during which creative cognition is highly important for adapting to several environmental changes [5]
The first goal of this structural neuroimaging study was to elucidate commonalities and differences in the relationship between gray matter morphology and performance in the verbal (AUT) and visuo-spatial (CAT) domain of divergent thinking in middle adolescents and young adults. These relationships were assessed across the brain without a priori location assumptions and within region of interest (ROI) that were activated during a verbal divergent thinking task [29], e.g., the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG), left IPC, bilateral ACC, right PC and right middle temporal gyrus (MTG)
Summary
Creativity is generally defined as the generation of new ideas, insights or problem solutions that are original, useful and of a particular level of difficulty [1]. Divergent thinking, which involves the ability to generate new and original solutions to an open-ended problem, is considered a key aspect of creative cognition and recent structural and functional neuroimaging studies have examined the neural areas which support divergent thinking [2]. Divergent thinking involves a complex cognitive process that has been operationalized in different ways. This is reflected in the differential neural findings between studies (for reviews see [2, 3, 4]). The current study investigated the relationship between gray matter morphology and divergent thinking in the verbal and visuo-spatial domain in adolescence and early adulthood, as this is a time period during which creative cognition is highly important for adapting to several environmental changes [5]
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