Recently, researchers at Stanford University began to explore the nervous system foundation of creativity and made amazing discoveries. Their research was published in the scientific report on May 28th. Studies have shown that controlling the cerebellum related to exercise is also related to creativity. If so, this discovery may change our understanding of the neural structure in the process of thinking. (Scientific American and Scientific Report belong to the nature publishing group. )
Some scientists believe that the cerebral cortex is an important part of "we are human beings", and the left and right hemispheres of the cerebral cortex make creative thinkers different from logical thinkers, namely "brain thinking" and "left brain thinking". Robert Barton said that this led to the view that neural processes can be divided into "advanced" cognitive functions and "low-level" basic sensory motor functions. Robert is an evolutionary biologist at Durham University in England. He didn't take part in this research, but the latest research disagrees with Robert.
Three and a half years ago, Grace Hawthorne, an associate professor at Stanford University School of Design (also known as D.School), met Allan Reiss, a behaviorist at Stanford University School of Medicine. Hawthorne wants to find a way to objectively measure whether her design class has improved students' creativity. Rice was inspired by a game called "Guess the Picture" and designed this experiment.
In this experiment, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) device and a non-magnetic plate were placed next to the participants. Participants need to draw a series of pictures (such as voting, fatigue, greeting) according to the given verbs, each word is 30 seconds. Participants need to draw a curve and know the baseline position of the brain in the process of drawing. Participants then evaluated the difficulty of expressing these words through painting. These pictures are sent to the researchers in the school of design through tablet computers-they need to grade the creativity of the pictures, and the researchers in the medical school need to analyze the dynamic pictures of the brain.
The results are very surprising: the prefrontal cortex, which is traditionally considered to be related to thinking, is the most active when it is the most difficult figure to draw in the participants' scores; At the peak of creativity, cerebellum is the most active. Essentially, the less participants think about what to draw, the more creative they are. Manish Saggar, a psychiatrist at Stanford University and the author of this paper, concluded: "The more you think, the more confused you are."
If the cerebellum plays an important role in creation, it may change our understanding of brain function. Traditionally, the cerebellum is only involved in motor control. This concept originated from the monkey experiment. The cerebellum is anatomically separated from the main body and located at the bottom of the brain, with little contact with other tissues. However, in the recent anatomical study of the human brain, it is found that the cerebellum has established contact with a large number of other brain tissues during the process of human evolution. Narendar Ramnaini, a neuroscientist at the University of London, has done relevant research. He suggested that it is this connection that makes the cerebellum not only participate in dynamic work, but also participate in cognitive work, which may also explain the development of human cognitive ability to a higher level. In this regard, the meta-analysis of human cerebellum activity is likely to show the role of cerebellum in cognitive work and open up a new direction of cognitive neuroscience research, Barton said.
However, the remarkable cerebellar activity in this study was unexpected, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data also measured the activity in other areas of the brain. Lisa Azziz-assis, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California who did not participate in the experiment, said that these findings are "representatives of the interconnection of different brain regions", which proves the necessity of developing new neural models with higher cognition, including creativity.
Ramnani said that in this experiment, "once you learn something, the cerebellum will subconsciously produce circuits", which proves the brain functional mechanism of "practice makes perfect". We know that, for example, when we learn new actions, the motor cortex of the brain becomes active, and then the cerebellum coordinates actions together by default, so that the motor cortex of the brain can continue to learn. In fact, when participants face cognitive challenges, cerebellar activity decreases; Once these tasks require some conscious thinking, the activity of cerebellum will increase. This phenomenon supports the hypothesis that the function of cerebellum in cognition is similar to motor control. If so, according to Rice, "the cerebellum is probably the coordination center of the brain, allowing other brain regions to work more effectively."
However, this study also has some limitations. First of all, it has been difficult to reach a consensus on how to define creativity in science. Therefore, researchers must come up with a feasible definition in order to objectively measure creativity. Second, because the cerebellum is related to movement, "the creativity of painting may be related to the complex body movements required for painting", said John Kounios, a cognitive neuroscientist at drexel University who was not involved in this research. The control of this experiment, that is, drawing a curve, may be much simpler than drawing according to the given text, so the subsequent experiments should try to adjust the difficulty and control conditions of creative work to ensure that it is closer to the same level. Finally, this experiment only measures visual creativity. In order to better understand the brain regions involved in creativity, follow-up research needs to observe brain activity maps about other forms of creativity, such as language and writing and playing music.
However, if this experiment of Stanford University can be repeated and improved, it will make us better understand creativity and other advanced cognitive forms in cognitive neuroscience.
Translation publishing house:
"Less is more" was put forward by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. He advocated the new concept of flowing space in processing technology. The details in his design works cannot be simplified. Although concise, his works are noble and elegant, and the structure itself has been sublimated into architectural art, so this "less is more" is aimed at the treatment of architectural art.
Kenya Hara, the well-known design director of MUJI, also adopted a similar design concept. His book White also talked about the concept of simplified design. But the difference is that Kenya Hara's White mainly discusses the concepts of "white" and "nothingness" in Japanese design. However, this concept is similar to "less is more". In his other book, Design in Design, he also mentioned a similar design philosophy, which is closer to "less is more". Besides Kenya Hara, there are many related design concepts that are very similar to Smith's ideas. For example, the famous de stijl in modern art is also based on simplification and simplification.
Translation: Jiao Qianqian revises:
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