New article on creativity — A meta- analysis of neuroimaging studies on divergent thinking using activation likelihood estimation

Creativity is the foundation of human civilizations, and all progress and innovation depend on the ability of humans to create new things. Thus, finding the mechanism of creativity in various fields, such as psychology, education, economics, and industry, is important. Although previous reviews (Arden et al. 2010; Dietrich and Kanso, 2010) have summarized the brain activity patterns related to creativity, an integrated understanding of the information is difficult to obtain because of the diverse tasks (such as divergent thinking tasks, insightful problems, and scientific problems) employed in creativity studies.

Motivated by Guilford’s definition of creative people (Guilford, 1950), experimental investigations on creativity are mainly facilitated by divergent thinking tasks (DTTs). In order to summarizing the brain activity patterns of creative ideas generation, Wu Xin and Qiu Jiang et al. using the Activation likelihood estimation (ALE) conduct a quantitative investigation of neuroimaging studies on divergent thinking. The ALE results indicated that the brain networks of the creative idea generation in DTTs may be composed of the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), posterior parietal cortex (PPC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and several regions in the temporal cortex. These brain regions were further divided into two different cognitive system: the left LPFC was related to selecting the loosely and remotely associative conceptions and organizing them into creative ideas, left PPC may be involved in the sematic information related to the retrieval and buffering of the formed creative ideas, and several regions in the temporal cortex may be related to the stored long-term memory; while right LPFC, right ACC, and right PPC might be related to the inhibition of irrelevant cognitive processes ensures that the creative idea generation is not disturbed by irrelevant information. In addition, the ALE results of structural studies showed that divergent thinking was related to the dopaminergic system (e.g., left caudate and claustrum).

Based on the ALE results, both fMRI and structural MRI studies could uncover the neural basis of divergent thinking from different aspects (e.g., specific cognitive processing and stable individual difference of cognitive capability).

自主创新是人类文明进步的主要动力，也是我国科学技术发展的主要指导思想和方针。因此，揭示创造性的产生机制对于许多学科都非常重要，例如心理学、教育学、经济学和工程领域。研究创造性的神经机制对于提高个体智力，充分开发大脑个体潜能都具有十分重要的现实意义和理论意义。近年来随着认知神经科学技术的发展，人们采用不同的实验任务（如发散思维任务、顿悟任务、科学发明任务等）对创造性的神经机制进行了研究。

然而由于研究范式的多样性以及研究手段和样本的差异，很难对各种实验结果形成清晰的认识，并构建统一的理论框架。为了解决这一问题，西南大学心理学部邱江教授和菏泽学院教育科学系邬鑫等人使用了激活可靠性估计（Activation Likelihood Estimation, ALE）和基于体素的参数元分析（Parametric Voxel-based Meta-analysis, PVM）两种元分析方法，对以发散思维为实验任务的创造性神经机制的17个研究（10个fMRI和7个结构性磁共振研究）进行了定量元分析。

fMRI研究的元分析表明，发散思维的脑网络主要包括外侧额叶、右半球的扣带前回、后顶区，以及颞叶的部分脑区。研究这进一步将上述脑区分为左半球语义加工区和右半球认知控制脑区。具体来说左半球的外侧额叶与远远距离语义信息的提取和融合有关，左侧后顶区与创造性观点产生过程中相关信息的提取与缓存有关，而颞叶的激活可能与长时记忆中相应只是经验的激活有关；左半球相关脑区主要与无关认知过程的抑制有关。结构性磁共振研究的元分析表明，发散思维的个体差异主要体现在散焦注意、知觉、记忆等方面。

该研究目前已被国际著名神经科学杂志Human Brain Mapping接受，近期将在该杂志发表。