The 20th century has seen entire production and services processes completely transformed by new technologies and new ways of doing what has always been done! On all the continents and across almost all cultures, humanity has also started making things it has never made before, and in some contexts this transformation seems to have achieved what we have only dreamed of for more than 50 years. Scientific and technological advances have brought irreversible changes not only in the way we produce things or provide services, but also in the way we access new knowledge and information, we choose what to dress and buy, our relationships with others, how we get about. Not even choosing a partner has resisted the transformations of the last century.
Since then, the changes in every scope have been gaining speed and nowadays equipment, methodologies, as well as information and knowledge, can become obsolete in record time. Any person, company or institution wishing to dance to this new rhythm must constantly search for innovation in processes and be alert to people and their necessities and desires that change almost daily.
Innovation has become a competitive differential in the list of necessities of any company and starts becoming part not only in the way we produce things, but also how teams, processes, resources, space and time are managed. Innovation requires the capacity to rethink our tasks, to analyze current actions from another angle, abandon the known and venture to create the new, dedicating ourselves to the creative process.
The author Ned Herrmann (The creative brain, 1991), one of the first scholars to propose a model for the functioning of the brain in the the creative processes said: “In companies of the future, new leaders will not be masters, but maestros; the task of leading will be to anticipate signs of coming changes, inspire creativity and get the best ideas from everybody”.
The more widely accepted definition of the concept of creativity describes it as: “the production of something new as useful” 1. Creative people are brave, since, as everyone knows, innovation is a risky process. But, in fact, why are some people so surprisingly creative? Why to others is the creative process so laborious? What happens in our minds and, more directly, in our brain during the creative process?
Over a long period of time, there has been strong support for the idea that analytical, practical and logical processes were attributions of the left hemisphere of the brain, while the functions related to passion and affection, poetical processes and creativity were attributed to the right hemisphere.
However, recent studies have demonstrated that creativity is not related to only one area of the brain, and it should not be attributed solely to one hemisphere alone. In fact, complex tasks, like the creative process and many others are possible thanks to the connection between different areas of the brain and, quite often, the connection between areas of different hemispheres. Duke University researchers have found an important correlation between the number of interhemispheric connections and the creative abilities of the subjects studied, in other words, those who performed better in tasks involving creative processes had a significantly higher number of connections between the two hemispheres. Another relevant aspect is related to the fact that, depending on what one intends to create, a different neural network will be co-opted, adding aspects of specialization to the execution of this task.
Three major key networks are said to be closely related to the creative processes: the first of these is the “Executive Attention Network”. This network functions especially in tasks that require focusing attention, when we are reading something complex or when we need to concentrate on resolving a problem. In addition, it mainly connects the prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal regions.
In this sense, this network would be related to conscious control and critique of actions, inhibiting distractions, and remaining strictly focused. Moreover, the structures of the prefrontal cortex are also involved in controlling impulses and monitoring human behavior so as to ensure the attainment of the desired goals through that action, as well as the social appropriateness of this behavior.
The second great network is called the “Imagination Network” and involves medial (internal) areas of the prefrontal and temporal cortex in communication with diverse medial and lateral (external) regions of the parietal cortex. These structures are activated mainly when we remember past events, when we search to understand different perspectives of a current situation, when we plan the future or when we try to deduce what someone else is thinking, a task also involved in social relationship abilities.
The “Salience Network” consists of the anterior cingulate dorsal cortex and the anterior insula area, fundamental areas for the flexibility of driving different cerebral structures and the exchange of functions between them, as well as for processing events external to the individual, that is, capturing what is going on around them. For this reason, this “salience” circuit is responsible for monitoring the flow of conscious processes, delegating t the execution of the task required at that moment to the areas responsible.
A recent study of meta-analysis has compiled more than a hundred articles that deal with the neuroscience of creativity, including studies that have correlated results with Functional Magnetic Resonance and other image exams, as well as works that have studied patients who suffered cerebral injuries and whose creative capacity was modified.
This review of the literature suggested that when we wish to open ourselves up to the associations of ideas, allowing our minds to travel t to new and unexplored environments, to imagine new possibilities, it becomes necessary to partly reduce the activity of the regions of the brain responsible for control and critical judgment of our thoughts and behaviors. This is where the Executive Attention Network makes way for the Salience and Imagination network to work more freely. In this way, the individual would encounter conditions for abandoning preconceived ideas or rigid and automatic ways of thinking and could have access to thoughts and new ideas without censorship or self-criticism that these regions exercise.
On the other hand, also during the creative formularization, these "judgmental" regions must at some moment reassume their position in order to critically evaluate the ideas arising from this first stage, preventing actions that are improper or that do not serve the desired purpose from being taken.
¹ Runco, M., and Jaeger, G. J. (2012). Standard The definition of creativity. Creat. Reverse speeds. J. 24, 92-96.
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Marina von Zuben, PhD, MSc.
Senior Associate BMI Blue Management Institute
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