Insight and Resting-State Brain Activity

洞察力和静息态大脑活动

• 批准号: 1125596
• 负责人: John Kounios
• 金额: $ 28.84万
• 依托单位: Drexel University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1125596&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Insight; Resting; State; Brain; Activity

Creativity is an important and essential human ability. Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. John Kounios of Drexel University, with funding from the National Science Foundation, is investigating the brain mechanisms that enable creative problem solving, especially those underlying what psychologists call "insight," colloquially known as the "Aha" or "Eureka" phenomenon. This project investigates three questions. What is the relationship between "resting-state" brain activity, that is, brain activity when a person daydreams with no task to perform, and the experience of insight during a later test? Can samples of such resting-state brain activity be used to identify brain states that lead to insightful problem solving and individuals who tend to solve problems creatively? What environmental or contextual factors can influence such brain states to enhance creative thought? The investigator hypothesizes that there is a relationship between brain activity during daydreaming and later creative performance during problem solving and other tasks. This relationship can be used to develop a brain-based test of creative ability and can be used to identify target brain states for future training protocols for increasing creativity. In one study, the investigator is recording participants' electroencephalograms (EEGs) during multiple sessions on different days and measuring participants' creative problem-solving performance to examine whether differences in brain activity among individuals are associated with higher and lower creativity. Other studies modify brain activity by giving participants different kinds of cognitive tasks to perform; these brain-activity changes are expected to influence later problem-solving performance and other measures of creative thought, in some cases, enhancing creativity. What are the origins of creative thought? This question is not merely academic. Economic success depends on flexible, creative thought and the innovation it empowers. Widespread concerns about waning innovation, fueled by recent research showing that creativity-test scores in the U.S. are decreasing, have brought to the forefront questions concerning the nature of creativity, and how it can be enhanced. Educational, business, and government organizations have focused on enhancing creativity, often without realizing that psychological and neuroscience research has begun to yield evidence concerning which strategies are effective for improving creativity and which are not. In particular, cognitive neuroscience, through new, advanced methods for measuring brain activity, has begun to focus on the topic of creativity, especially the phenomenon of sudden insight, a process that suddenly confers a new perspective or solution to a problem through an "Aha moment." The current NSF-funded project is isolating and analyzing brain states conducive to creative insight and investigating techniques for enhancing creativity by facilitating these brain states.

创造力是人类的重要和重要的能力。 Drexel University的认知神经科学家John Kounios博士在国家科学基金会的资助下，正在调查能够解决创造性问题的大脑机制，尤其是那些基于心理学家所说的“ Insight”的基础的人，俗称“ AHA”或“ Eurerka”现象。 该项目调查了三个问题。 “静止状态”大脑活动之间的关系是什么，即当一个人做白日梦而没有执行任务时的大脑活动，而在以后的测试中洞察力的经验是什么？ 能否使用这种静止状态大脑活动的样本来识别导致有见地的问题解决问题的大脑状态，并且倾​​向于创造性地解决问题的人？ 哪些环境或背景因素可以影响这种大脑状态以增强创造性思想？ 研究人员假设在做梦中的大脑活动与后来的问题解决和其他任务之间的创造性表现之间存在关系。 这种关系可用于开发基于大脑的创造能力测试，可用于识别目标大脑状态以提高创造力的未来培训方案。 在一项研究中，研究人员正在在不同日期进行多次疗程中记录参与者的脑电图（EEG），并测量参与者的创造性问题解决绩效，以检查个体之间大脑活动的差异是否与较高和较低的创造力相关。 其他研究通过为参与者提供不同类型的认知任务来改变大脑活动；这些大脑活动的变化有望影响以后的解决问题的表现和其他创造性思维的衡量标准，在某些情况下会增强创造力。 创意思想的起源是什么？ 这个问题不仅是学术。 经济成功取决于灵活的，创造性的思想及其赋予的创新。 最近的研究表明，在美国的创造力测试分数正在下降，对创造力的性质以及如何增强它的最前沿问题。教育，商业和政府组织的重点是增强创造力，通常没有意识到心理和神经科学研究已开始产生有关哪些策略有效提高创造力而不是哪些策略的证据。 特别是，通过测量大脑活动的新的高级方法，认知神经科学开始着重于创造力的主题，尤其是突然见解的现象，该过程突然通过“ AHA时刻”赋予了新的观点或解决问题的新观点或解决方案。 当前由NSF资助的项目正在隔离和分析有利于创造性洞察力的大脑状态，并研究通过促进这些大脑状态来增强创造力的技术。