Creative Thinking and Brain Activity - Part II

As promised in the previous post, I am going to peek further into the parts of the brain that get activated during the creative thinking process. 

Fig(i) - The Basal Ganglia Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_ganglia Lim S-J, Fiez JA and Holt LL (2014)  Front. Neurosci. 8:230. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2014.00230 

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2014.00230/full

Basal Ganglia - Basal Ganglia lies deep within the brain and is primarily involved in motor control. Motor control means to regulate the mechanisms of voluntary movement, basically, it means an ability to perform any action or movement like writing something or swaying your hand to someone. But today there is research that Basal Ganglia is also associated with the developmental aspects of human skills such as language, speech, memory, learning, etc. Habit learning is also reported to be a part of Basal Ganglia. All these features of Basal Ganglia point towards creativity. (Sources: Connecting the dots 2017, Basal Ganglia 2017). So remember when you lift your hand to do an activity or when you just go bicycling or swimming it is Basal Ganglia in action.

Fig(ii) - Frontal lobe is pink coloured and parietal lobe is the Green Coloured Area Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain, derivative work of this - Gutenberg Encyclopedia

Parietal Lobe: The parietal lobe is in charge of sensory information such as touch and the concepts related to dimension, time, space, direction, etc. It is also reported that this part of the brain may be associated with mathematical reasoning. (Source: Meta-analysis 2014) 

Our brains have a complex but highly developed system of networks in place. These networks lead to interaction between the different parts of the brain and are responsible for correlating all the activity within the brain. Let us look at these networks now.

The Executive Attention Network as the name suggests aids in grabbing attention. Executive attention network connects and works with the outer layers of the prefrontal cortex and the back of the parietal lobe. The next comes the Imagination Network and the imagination network goes deeper and looks within the prefrontal cortex connecting both the inner and outer regions of the parietal lobe. Any kind of mental imagery is brought out by the imagination network. Studies indicate that when the executive attention network and imagination network interact within the prefrontal cortex creative thoughts arise. Then there is the Salience Network (SN). This network is responsible for monitoring the executive attention network and the imagination network and switching between them. These networks constantly interact and connect and studies report that the speed with which the interactions and connections take place may be a factor leading to creativity in a person. Let us take a simple example to understand what all the above means. Say for example you want to create a song. In the beginning, you will need a lot of imagination and the imagination network would get fired up. Once you have the words and a mental image of what kind of song you want with all the emotions in place, the Salience Networks gets triggered and switches the network from the imagination network to the executive attention network. As the executive attention network gets activated you focus more on completing the song by giving attention to details. To read more on the research about these three networks and creativity click the source The Circuitry of Creativity. 

This is not all, our brain as a whole, works together and the different regions of the brain become active at the same time. It is difficult to associate any one part of the brain with a particular function. More research in this area is required let alone on creativity and intelligence. Memory, visual attention, problem solving, perception are a few complicated cognitive tasks that our brain performs with a lot of ease. The networks, the triggering of neurons and activation of all the areas of the brain happen with great speed and control. Nature has given us examples of perfection. Such excellence and flawless execution might still be a far away dream but can we not at least emulate the discipline in our lives to be better human beings? Just think about it.