Abstract
Creative people singled out for innovation tend to have several things in common: (a) high levels of specialized knowledge; (b) employ divergent thinking; (c) and as mediated by the cortical frontal lobe, dispense neurotransmitter modulators, such as norepinephrine. The frontal lobe appears to be the part of the cortex that is most centrally related to creativity. Analyzing musical performers from the perspective of the right and left cortical hemispheres suggests that both evolution and genetics have influenced preferences for creativity.
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.—Baruch Spinoza
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Notes
- 1.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the earliest surviving great work of literature, which was found in The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, which also held a collection of 30,000 clay tablets and fragments containing texts from the seventh century BCE.
- 2.
Some scholars claim that humans have been shaped by evolution to be musical, while others maintain that musical abilities reflect an alternative use of more adaptive cognitive skills.
- 3.
One working hypothesis is that the default network’s primary function is to support internal mental simulations that are used adaptively. From this perspective, the network can be engaged in a directed manner, such as recalling the location of a parked car, and also when the mind wanders from the immediate task at hand.
- 4.
The parietal lobe sits in the center of your head, above the temporal lobe, while the frontal sits in the fore and the occipital aft of the parietal.
- 5.
Neuroscience, psychology, and computer science are disciplines which now engage in the study of brain-based mechanisms underlying music, across a wide range of activities such as listening, performing, composing, reading, writing, musical aesthetics and musical emotion.
- 6.
Alex Doman, A. “Do Musicians Have Bigger Brains?” See, https://www.braintraining101.com/do-musicians-have-bigger-brains/ (Last visited 5/16/2019).
- 7.
See, EDxUChicago 2011, Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, Rules of Engagement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e1xU0-h9Y8.
- 8.
An autotelic activity is one that involves doing something for the sake of it.
- 9.
Alice Flaherty proposes a three-factor model of creative drive, where she describes it as implicating the frontal lobes, the temporal lobes, and dopamine from the limbic system. The frontal lobes can be seen as responsible for idea generation, and the temporal lobes for idea editing and evaluation. See, Flaherty, A.W. (2005). “Frontotemporal and Dopaminergic Control of Idea Generation and Creative Drive.” The Journal of comparative Neurology 493 (1): 147–153. https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.20768.
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Carvalko Jr., J.R. (2020). Crannies and Stacks. In: Conserving Humanity at the Dawn of Posthuman Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26407-9_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26407-9_15
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