Painters, designers, architects and other creative individuals are typically thought of as right-brained. But a new study from the University of Southern California suggests that creativity may require more logical left brain thinking than previously thought.

Zach Stemerick THE CHRONICLE

The study, published online last month in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, showed that while the right brain does the bulk of the heavy lifting in creative thinking, the left side of the brain also plays a critical role.

In the popular media, people usually associate the right brain with creativity, said lead researcher Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, an assistant professor of neuroscience. But its definitely more complicated than that.

Aziz-Zadeh and fellow researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of architecture students, who tend to be visually imaginative, while they performed creative tasks.

As they were scanned, participants were asked to visualize images that could be created by rearranging the No. 8, a circle and the letter C. They also mentally pieced together shapes to create rectangles, a task that requires spatial processing but not necessarily creativity.

The results showed that the logical, mathematical left side of the students brains lit up just as much as the creative side while performing the artistic task.

I think that the two hemispheres do complementary processing, Aziz-Zadeh said. The right hemisphere of the brain provides the big picture, and the left controls sequential processing. Both of those are important for creativity.

The research also showed that the students medial frontal cortexes, the area of the brain that controls planning and problem solving, were highly active while performing tasks. According to Aziz-Zadeh, this suggests that the left and right hemispheres of the brain have an equally important influence on the creative process.

I think what was most surprising is how simple the results were, she said. Usually, studies produce all of these results that you dont know what to make of, but our results on this study were very clear.

View original post here:
Home » Health and Fitness , Science and Health » Neuroscience of creativity