Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Temporal characteristics of frontoparietal control network related to inhibiting low creative ideas in creative tasks

  • Published:
Current Psychology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In the present study, we hypothesized that the frontoparietal control network played important roles in effectively inhibiting the low creative ideas when performing the creative tasks. To test this hypothesis, the alternative uses task was used to obtain the creative score and the low-creative ideas ratio (LCIR), and the resting-state electroencephalogram (RS-EEG) microstates were used to measure the temporal characteristics of the frontoparietal control network. The results showed that the creative score plays moderating roles in the relationships between the LCIR and the parameters of the fourth microstate (MS4) which is generated from the frontoparietal control network. Specifically, for the individuals with higher creative score, the LCIR were negatively associated with the coverage rate of the MS4 and the possibilities of transitions between MS4 and MS1 (related to the semantic network), while the relationships were not observed for the individuals with lower creative score. Thus, we thought that the frontoparietal control network might be easier to sequentially activate the semantic network for the individuals with higher creative score, which make them more effectively inhibiting the low creative ideas under the creative tasks.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Data and code availability

The data that support the findings of this study are included in the Supplementary Materials.

References

  • Acar, S., Runco, M. A., & Park, H. (2020). What should people be told when they take a divergent thinking test? A meta-analytic review of explicit instructions for divergent thinking. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts,14(1), 39–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beaty, R. E., & Silvia, P. J. (2012). Why do ideas get more creative across time? An executive interpretation of the serial order effect in divergent thinking tasks. Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts, 6(4), 309–319.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beaty, R. E., Silvia, P. J., Nusbaum, E. C., Jauk, E., & Benedek, M. (2014). The roles of associative and executive processes in creative cognition. Memory & Cognition,42(7), 1186–1197.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beaty, R. E., Benedek, M., Kaufman, S. B., & Silvia, P. J. (2015). Default and executive network coupling supports creative idea production. Scientific Reports,5, 10964.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Beaty, R. E., Benedek, M., Silvia, P. J., & Schacter, D. L. (2016). Creative cognition and brain network dynamics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20, 87–95.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Beaty, R. E., Kenett, Y. N., Christensen, A. P., Rosenberg, M. D., Benedek, M., Chen, Q., Silvia, P. J., Beaty, R. E., Kenett, Y. N., Christensen, A. P., Rosenberg, M. D., Benedek, M., Chen, Q., Fink, A., Qiu, J., Kwapil, T. R., Kane, M. J., & Silvia, P. J. (2018). Robust prediction of individual creative ability from brain functional connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,115, 1087–1092.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benedek, M., & Neubauer, A. C. (2013). Revisiting mednick’s model on creativity-related differences in associative hierarchies. Evidence for a common path to uncommon thought. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 47(4), 273–289.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Benedek, M., Bergner, S., Könen, T., Fink, A., & Neubauer, A. C. (2011). EEG alpha synchronization is related to top-down processing in convergent and divergent thinking. Neuropsychologia, 49(12), 3505–3511.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Benedek, M., Jauk, E., Fink, A., Koschutnig, K., Reishofer, G., Ebner, F., & Neubauer, A. C. (2014). To create or to recall? Neural mechanisms underlying the generation of creative new ideas. Neuroimage,88, 125–133.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Benedek, M., Kenett, Y. N., Umdasch, K., Anaki, D., Faust, M., & Neubauer, A. C. (2017). How semantic memory structure and intelligence contribute to creative thought: a network science approach. Thinking & Reasoning, 23(2), 158–183.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benedek, M., Schües, T., Beaty, R. E., Jauk, E., Koschutnig, K., Fink, A., & Neubauer, A. C. (2018). To create or to recall original ideas: brain processes associated with the imagination of novel object uses. Cortex; A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior,99, 93–102.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Britz, J., Van De Ville, D., & Michel, C. M. (2010). BOLD correlates of EEG topography reveal rapid resting-state network dynamics. Neuroimage,52(4), 1162–1170.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, C., Kasof, J., Himsel, A., Dmitrieva, J., Dong, Q., & Xue, G. (2005). Effects of explicit instruction to “be creative” across domains and cultures. The Journal of Creative Behavior,39(2), 89–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, Q., Beaty, R. E., Wei, D., Yang, J., Sun, J., Liu, W., Qiu, J., Chen, Q., Beaty, R. E., Wei, D., Yang, J., Sun, J., Liu, W., Yang, W., Zhang, Q., & Qiu, J. (2018). Longitudinal alterations of frontoparietal and frontotemporal networks predict future creative cognitive ability. Cerebral Cortex,28(1), 103–115.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cogdell-Brooke, L. S., Sowden, P. T., Violante, I. R., & Thompson, H. E. (2020). A meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of divergent thinking using activation likelihood estimation. Human Brain Mapping,41(17), 5057–5077.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Curran, P. J., West, S. G., & Finch, J. F. (1996). The robustness of test statistics to nonnormality and specification error in confirmatory factor analysis. Psychological Methods,1(1), 16–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dewhurst, S. A., Thorley, C., Hammond, E. R., & Ormerod, T. C. (2011). Convergent, but not divergent, thinking predicts susceptibility to associative memory illusions. Personality and Individual Differences,51(1), 73–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dumas, D., & Runco, M. (2018). Objectively scoring divergent thinking tests for originality: a re-analysis and extension. Creativity Research Journal,30(4), 466–468.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fink, A., & Benedek, M. (2014). EEG alpha power and creative ideation. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews,44, 111–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fink, A., Benedek, M., Koschutnig, K., Pirker, E., Berger, E., Meister, S., & Weiss, E. M. (2015). Training of verbal creativity modulates brain activity in regions associated with language-and memory‐related demands. Human Brain Mapping,36(10), 4104–4115.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Fink, A., Grabner, R. H., Gebauer, D., Reishofer, G., Koschutnig, K., & Ebner, F. (2010). Enhancing creativity by means of cognitive stimulation: evidence from an fMRI study. Neuroimage,52(4), 1687–1695.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fink, A., Koschutnig, K., Benedek, M., Reishofer, G., Ischebeck, A., Weiss, E. M., & Ebner, F. (2012). Stimulating creativity via the exposure to other people’s ideas. Human Brain Mapping,33(11), 2603–2610.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gao, Z. K., Cai, Q., Yang, Y. X., Dong, N., & Zhang, S. S. (2017). Visibility graph from adaptive optimal kernel time-frequency representation for classification of epileptiform EEG. International Journal of Neural Systems,27(04), 1750005.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gilhooly, K. J., Fioratou, E., Anthony, S. H., & Wynn, V. (2007). Divergent thinking: strategies and executive involvement in generating novel uses for familiar objects. British Journal of Psychology, 98(4), 611–625.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guilford, J. P. (1967). The nature of human intelligence. McGraw-Hill.

  • Guilford, J. P. (1950). Creativity. American Psychologist,5(9), 444–454.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hayes, A. F. (2018). Partial, conditional, and moderated moderated mediation: Quantification, inference, and interpretation. Communication Monographs, 85(1), 4–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson-Frey, S. H. (2004). The neural bases of complex tool use in humans. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(2), 71–78.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kaufman, J. C., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.) (2010). Cambridge handbook of creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  • Khanna, A., Pascual-Leone, A., & Farzan, F. (2014). Reliability of resting-state microstate features in electroencephalography. PloS One,9(12), e114163.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Khanna, A., Pascual-Leone, A., Michel, C. M., & Farzan, F. (2015). Microstates in resting-state EEG: current status and future directions. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews,49, 105–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koenig, T., Lehmann, D., Merlo, M. C., Kochi, K., Hell, D., & Koukkou, M. (1999). A deviant EEG brain microstate in acute, neuroleptic-naive schizophrenics at rest. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience,249(4), 205–211.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kühn, S., Ritter, S. M., Müller, B. C., Van Baaren, R. B., Brass, M., & Dijksterhuis, A. (2014). The importance of the default mode network in creativity—a structural MRI study. The Journal of Creative Behavior,48(2), 152–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lehmann, D., Ozaki, H., & Pál, I. (1987). EEG alpha map series: brain micro-states by space-oriented adaptive segmentation. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology,67(3), 271–288.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lehmann, D., Strik, W. K., Henggeler, B., König, T., & Koukkou, M. (1998). Brain electric microstates and momentary conscious mind states as building blocks of spontaneous thinking: I. Visual imagery and abstract thoughts. International Journal of Psychophysiology,29(1), 1–11.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lifshitz-Ben-Basat, A., & Mashal, N. (2021). Enhancing creativity by altering the frontoparietal control network functioning using transcranial direct current stimulation. Experimental Brain Research,239, 613–626.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Matheson, H. E., Buxbaum, L. J., & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2017). Differential tuning of ventral and dorsal streams during the generation of common and uncommon tool uses. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,29(11), 1791–1802.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Musso, F., Brinkmeyer, J., Mobascher, A., Warbrick, T., & Winterer, G. (2010). Spontaneous brain activity and EEG microstates. A novel EEG/fMRI analysis approach to explore resting-state networks. Neuroimage,52(4), 1149–1161.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Niu, W., & Liu, D. (2009). Enhancing creativity: a comparison between effects of an indicative instruction “to be creative” and a more elaborate heuristic instruction on chinese student creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts,3(2), 93–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pascual-Marqui, R. D., Michel, C. M., & Lehmann, D. (1995). Segmentation of brain electrical activity into microstates: model estimation and validation. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering,42(7), 658–665.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Shi, L., Beaty, R. E., Chen, Q., Sun, J., Wei, D., Yang, W., & Qiu, J. (2020). Brain entropy is associated with divergent thinking. Cerebral Cortex,30(2), 708–717.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Silvia, P. J., Winterstein, B. P., Willse, J. T., Barona, C. M., Cram, J. T., Hess, K. I., Richard, C. A., Silvia, P. J., Winterstein, B. P., Willse, J. T., Barona, C. M., Cram, J. T., Hess, K. I., Martinez, J. L., & Richard, C. A. (2008). Assessing creativity with divergent thinking tasks: exploring the reliability and validity of new subjective scoring methods. Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts,2, 68–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sternberg, R. J. (1999). A propulsion model of types of creative contributions. Review of General Psychology, 3(2), 83–100.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sun, J., Shi, L., Chen, Q., Yang, W., Wei, D., Zhang, J., Qiu, J., Sun, J., Shi, L., Chen, Q., Yang, W., Wei, D., Zhang, J., Zhang, Q., & Qiu, J. (2019). Openness to experience and psychophysiological interaction patterns during divergent thinking. Brain Imaging and Behavior,13(6), 1580–1589.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tibshirani, R., & Walther, G. (2005). Cluster validation by prediction strength. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics,14(3), 511–528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van de Ville, D., Britz, J., & Michel, C. M. (2010). EEG microstate sequences in healthy humans at rest reveal scale-free dynamics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,107(42), 18179–18184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wagner, A. D., Paré-Blagoev, E. J., Clark, J., & Poldrack, R. A. (2001). Recovering meaning: left prefrontal cortex guides controlled semantic retrieval. Neuron,31(2), 329–338.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Whitney, C., Kirk, M., O’Sullivan, J., Lambon Ralph, M. A., & Jefferies, E. (2011). The neural organization of semantic control: TMS evidence for a distributed network in left inferior frontal and posterior middle temporal gyrus. Cerebral Cortex,21(5), 1066–1075.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wu, X., Guo, J., Wang, Y., Zou, F., Guo, P., Lv, J., & Zhang, M. (2020). The relationships between trait creativity and resting-state EEG microstates were modulated by self-esteem. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14, 576114.

  • Wu, X., Yang, W., Tong, D., Sun, J., Chen, Q., Wei, D., et al. (2015). A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies on divergent thinking using activation likelihood estimation. Human Brain Mapping,36(7), 2703–2718.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Xiao, Z., & Huang, J. (2022). The relation between college students’ social anxiety and mobile phone addiction: the mediating role of regulatory emotional self-efficacy and subjective well-being. Frontiers in Psychology,13, 861527–861527.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Yilmaz, S., Seifert, C. M., & Gonzalez, R. (2010). Cognitive heuristics in design: instructional strategies to increase creativity in idea generation. Ai Edam,24(3), 335–355.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yuan, H., Zotev, V., Phillips, R., Drevets, W. C., & Bodurka, J. (2012). Spatiotemporal dynamics of the brain at rest—exploring EEG microstates as electrophysiological signatures of BOLD resting state networks. Neuroimage,60(4), 2062–2072.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zmigrod, S., Colzato, L. S., & Hommel, B. (2015). Stimulating creativity: modulation of convergent and divergent thinking by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Creativity Research Journal,27(4), 353–360.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31600927, 81830040), the Youth Foundation of Social Science and Humanity, China Ministry of Education (19YJCZH179), and the Key scientific research projects of colleges and universities in Henan province (20A190001).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Xin Wu and Xirui Zhang contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan, 453003, China

    Xin Wu, Jianing Zhang, Yufeng Wang, Feng Zou & Meng Zhang

  2. School of Nursing, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan, 453003, China

    Xirui Zhang, Xiaochen Yang & Yanyan Luo

Authors
  1. Xin Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Xirui Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Xiaochen Yang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Jianing Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Yufeng Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Feng Zou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Yanyan Luo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Meng Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xin Wu or Meng Zhang.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

ESM 1

(DOCX 16.5 KB)

ESM 2

(XLSX 69.3 KB)

ESM 3

(XLSX 17.9 KB)

ESM 4

(XLSX 67.6 KB)

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wu, X., Zhang, X., Yang, X. et al. Temporal characteristics of frontoparietal control network related to inhibiting low creative ideas in creative tasks. Curr Psychol 43, 11413–11421 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04858-w

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04858-w

Keywords

Search

Navigation