Category: Creativity

How to think more flexibly and grow a larger brain.

Adults who are more physically active have greater mental flexibility, new research reports.

On top of this, those who do more exercise have larger brain volumes and more intact white matter.

The new research found that moderate or vigorous physical activity was linked to more variable brain activity in older adults.

It’s known that variable brain activity is linked to performing better on complex cognitive tasks.

Professor Agnieszka Burzynska, who led the research said:

“We looked at 100 adults between the ages of 60 and 80, and we used accelerometers to objectively measure their physical activity over a week.

We found that spontaneous brain activity showed more moment-to-moment fluctuations in the more-active adults.

In a previous study, we showed that in some of the same regions of the brain, those people who have higher brain variability also performed better on complex cognitive tasks, especially on intelligence tasks and memory.”

Participants had their brains scanned and the amount of exercise they’d done over a week recorded.

The microscopic integrity of the brain’s white-matter fibres was also examined.

The white matter is the brain’s cabling: it transmits signals between different areas.

Professor Art Kramer, also a study author, said:

“Our study, when viewed in the context of previous studies that have examined behavioral variability in cognitive tasks, suggests that more-fit older adults are more flexible, both cognitively and in terms of brain function, than their less-fit peers.”

Not only does the study underline the mental benefits of exercise, it also provides another way to assess brain health in aging.

Professor Burzynska said:

“We want to know how the brain relates to the body, and how physical health influences mental and brain health in aging.

Here, instead of a structural measure, we are taking a functional measure of brain health.

And we are finding that tracking changes in blood-oxygenation levels over time is useful for predicting cognitive functioning and physical health in aging.”

One day it may be possible to tell how physically fit a person is by imaging the brain.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Burzynska et al., 2015).

Network brain image from Shutterstock

Genetic study supports common belief about bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Genes which boost creativity may also increase the chance of developing bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, a new study has found.

Creativity and psychiatric disorders have previously been linked.

For example, people in creative professions are more likely to have psychiatric illnesses in their family — particularly bipolar disorder.

However, it wasn’t clear whether common genes were involved.

The study looked at 86,292 people in Finland.

Members of the national artistic societies of actors, musicians, writers and dancers were taken to be more creative individuals.

The link to their genetics was then examined.

Dr Robert A Power, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“Our findings suggest that creative people may have a genetic predisposition towards thinking differently which, when combined with other harmful biological or environmental factors, could lead to mental illness.”

Creative people had elevated genetic risk scores for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The risk was around midway between the general population and those with the mental illnesses.

Dr Robert said:

“For most psychiatric disorders little is known about the underlying biological pathways that lead to illness.

An idea that has gained credibility is that these disorders reflect extremes of the normal spectrum of human behaviour, rather than a distinct psychiatric illness.

By knowing which healthy behaviours, such as creativity, share their biology with psychiatric illnesses we gain a better understanding of the thought processes that lead a person to become ill and how the brain might be going wrong.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience (Power et al., 2015).

• Read on: The Dark Side of Creativity.

Creativity image from Shutterstock

Creativity study reveals an unexpected tip.

The more you consciously think, the less creative you are, a new study finds.

The researchers had people playing ‘Pictionary’, a game where you have to try and draw a word.

At the same time their brains were scanned to see which areas were most active, and when.

Professor Allan Reiss, one of the study’s authors, explained the results:

“We found that activation of the brain’s executive-control centers — the parts of the brain that enable you to plan, organize and manage your activities — is negatively associated with creative task performance.

Creativity is an incredibly valued human attribute in every single human endeavor, be it work or play.

In art, science and business, creativity is the engine that drives progress.

As a practicing psychiatrist, I even see its importance to interpersonal relationships.

People who can think creatively and flexibly frequently have the best outcomes.”

Below are some of the pictures that people drew.

The words they were trying to describe are on the left:

Instead of the brain’s executive control centre, researchers found that people drew more creative pictures when the cerebellum was activated.

The cerebellum is an area at the back of the brain which coordinates movement.

Naturally, neuroscientist have not previously connected this area of the brain with creativity.

Professor Reiss explained:

“It’s likely that the cerebellum is the coordination center for the rest of brain, allowing other regions to be more efficient.

As our study also shows, sometimes a deliberate attempt to be creative may not be the best way to optimize your creativity.

While greater effort to produce creative outcomes involves more activity of executive-control regions, you actually may have to reduce activity in those regions in order to achieve creative outcomes.

Dr Manish Saggar, the study’s first authors, summed it up neatly:

“The more you think about it, the more you mess it up.”

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Sagger et al., 2015).

• Read on: How To Be Creative

Lightbulb image from Shutterstock

The surprising effect of glancing at a grassy rooftop for just 40 seconds.

Taking a 40 second break to glance at a grassy rooftop boosts concentration and reduces mental errors, a new study finds.

Dr Kate Lee, of the University of Melbourne Faculty of Science, who led the study, said:

“We know that green roofs are great for the environment, but now we can say that they boost attention too.

Imagine the impact that has for thousands of employees working in nearby offices.

This study showed us that looking at an image of nature for less than a minute was all it took to help people perform better on our task.

Dr Lee continued:

“It’s really important to have micro-breaks.

It’s something that a lot of us do naturally when we’re stressed or mentally fatigued.

There’s a reason you look out the window and seek nature, it can help you concentrate on your work and to maintain performance across the workday.

Certainly this study has implications for workplace well-being and adds extra impetus to continue greening our cities.

City planners around the world are switching on to these benefits of green roofs and we hope the future of our cities will be a very green one.”

The study was published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology (Lee et al., 2015)

Network brain image from Shutterstock

Why photography, cooking or other creative hobbies might help you get on at work.

People who have a creative hobby outside work may find it boosts their work performance, according to a new study by organisational psychologists.

The study looked at the indirect effect of creative hobbies like photography, needlework or cooking on work performance (Eschleman et al., 2014).

The study found that creative hobbies may help employees recover from the demands of their job.

People in the study talked passionately about their activities outside of work.

The study’s lead author, Kevin Eschleman, said:

“They usually describe it as lush, as a deep experience that provides a lot of things for them.

“But they also talk about this idea of self-expression and an opportunity to really discover something about themselves, and that isn’t always captured with the current recovery experience models.”

In the study, two groups of people were asked about their creative activities outside work and also how creative they were at work.

The first group of 341 employees self-rated their job performance while a second group of 92 US Air Force captains were evaluated by coworkers and subordinates.

The results from both samples showed that those who had a creative hobby were more likely to feel a sense of relaxation outside work and to feel greater control and a sense of mastery.

At work, meanwhile, those with a creative hobby were more likely to help others and to be more creative in the performance of their job.

Statistical analysis suggested that the better job performance was partly a result of a greater sense of mastery and control during off-time.

Creative recovery

This study doesn’t mean organisations should start forcing employees to take up creative hobbies.

Eschleman continued:

“One of the main concerns is that you don’t want to have someone feel like their organization is controlling them, especially when it comes to creative activities.

Because intrinsic motivation is part of that unique experience that comes with creative activity.”

Instead the authors suggest:

“Large organizations, such as Zappos Inc., incorporate employee artwork into office decorations.

Other similar activities commonly found in organizations include food cook-offs, cross-discipline education opportunities, and costume contests during holidays.

A more cost-effective and less intrusive approach for organization is to inform employees that creative activity may help them recover from the workplace.” (Eschleman et al., 2014)

Image credit: Margot Gabel

“Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box.”

Swedish researchers have found similarities in the dopamine system between highly creative individuals and those with schizophrenia.

The study, published in PLoS ONE, fuels the debate about the connection between madness and creativity (Manzano et al., 2010).

One of the study’s author, associate professor Fredrik Ullén, explained:

“The study shows that highly creative people who did well on the divergent tests had a lower density of D2 receptors in the thalamus than less creative people.

“Schizophrenics are also known to have low D2 density in this part of the brain, suggesting a cause of the link between mental illness and creativity.”

The reason for the focus on the thalamus is that it serves as a kind of relay centre for the brain, filtering information before it reaches other areas responsible for higher-level thinking.

“Fewer D2 receptors in the thalamus probably means a lower degree of signal filtering, and thus a higher flow of information from the thalamus.”

One of the key abilities of creative people is to make unusual connections between ideas.

Theoretically this could be enhanced by these differences in the dopamine system.

Dr Ullén sums up by saying:

“Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box.”

Image credit: Gioia De Antonlis