Peter U. Tse | Kathryn Welds, PhD | Curated Research + Commentary

Rafeeque Bhadelia

Increased connection between brain hemispheres has been considered essential for creative problem-solving and creative expression: Previous research reported a relationship between the size of the corpus callosum connecting brain hemispheres.

However, a more nuanced understanding of brain structure is needed, based on contradictory findings from Cornell’s Dana W. Moore, collaborating with Rafeeque A. Bhadelia and Carl Fulwiler of Tufts and Suffolk University’s Rebecca L. Billings and David A. Gansler, teamed with University of Florida’s Kenneth M. Heilman, and Kenneth M.J. Rood of Boston University.

Carl Fulwiler

The team measured creativity in divergent thinking using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) for 21 right-handed male volunteers.
Divergent-thinking tasks provide scores for fluency, flexibility, originality, abstractness, resistance to premature closure, and elaboration, and additional scores for emotional expressiveness, story-telling articulateness, movement, synthesis of figures, humor, richness of imagery, and fantasy.

Paul Torrance

Results from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) explained almost half of the variance in creative achievement, measured by quantity of publicly-recognized innovative accomplishments and ratings by judges of each participant’s three most significant creative work products in research by Indiana University of Connecticut’s Jonathan Plucker.

Jonathan Plucker

Moore’s team also performed volumetric MRIs participants’ distributed inter- and intra-hemispheric network activity, and confirmed the relationship between visual–spatial divergent .

However, they found no significant relationship between the right hemisphere’s white matter volume (WMV) and creative production in divergent thinking tasks.

In fact, people with smaller corpus callosum in relation to total white matter volume scored higher on divergent-thinking tasks than those with larger corpus callosum.

Torrance Test of Creativity

Smaller white matter volume indicates more successful neuronal pruning during brain development, leading to increased neural connection and modular brain organization efficiency, they suggested.

Lateralized knowledge processing and momentary suspension of hemispheric modularity may account for creative illumination, incubation and generating divergent ideas, noted University of Southern California’s Joseph E. Bogen and Glenda M. Bogen.
Both processes were aided by decreased callosal connectivity and increased enhances hemispheric specialization in their observations.

Joseph E. Bogen

Creativity and brain structures seem to have a reciprocal relationship: The brain’s structure is reflected in creative performance, and can be changed by training in visual art.

As drawing skills improved, cortical and cerebellar activity patterns changed and prefrontal white matter reorganized, shown in monthly fMRI scans by Dartmouth’s Alexander Schlegel, Prescott Alexander, Sergey V. Fogelson, Xueting Li, Zhengang Lu, Peter J. Kohler, Enrico Riley, Peter U. Tse, and Ming Men.

Alex Schlegel, Prescott Alexander

In addition, participants showed increased divergent thinking and use of model systems, processes, and imagery, but not perceptual abilities.

These findings indicate that neural pathways are adaptable or “plastic” to enable creative cognition and perceptual-motor integration.

-*What do you do to change your brain function?

Follow-share-like http://www.kathrynwelds.com and @kathrynwelds

RELATED POSTS:

©Kathryn Welds

Many daily actions like perceiving through the senses, speaking, and walking require accurate timing, often to milliseconds.

These underlying brain mechanisms are crucial to determining causality, decoding temporal patterns, and managing “time demands,” a commitment to complete a task in the future.

Francis Wade

Francis Wade suggests conducting a systemic diagnostic assessment of current time demand management practices to identify effective approaches, and those that can benefit from fine-tuning.
This leads to a plan that requires external support from people and technology.

But these processes depend on the brain’s accurate time perception.
-*How does the brain perceive time?

David Eagleman

Baylor College of Medicine’s David M. Eagleman summarized extensive research that answers this question, with collaboration from Peter U. Tse of Dartmouth, UCLA’s Dean Buonomano, Peter Janssen of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, University of Oxford’s Anna Christina Nobre, and Alex O. Holcombe of Cardiff University.

Peter Tse

One recent change to the prevailing view that the basal ganglia and cerebellar systems are the brain’s main timekeepers comes from University of New Mexico’s Deborah L. Harrington and Kathleen Y. Haaland.

Kathleen Haaland

They built on this finding in work with Robert T. Knight of University of California, Davis, investigating the cerebral cortex’s role in perceptual timekeeping by studying task performance of volunteers with focal left (LHD) or right hemisphere (RHD) lesions compared with uninjured participants.

Robert T. Knight

The groups performed a time duration perception task and a frequency perception task, which controlled for non-time processes in both tasks.
Only people with right hemisphere cerebral cortex lesions showed time perception deficits, suggesting that this area also contributes to perceptual timekeeping.

People with this damage who accurately perceived time were also able to switch nonspatial attention, implying that time perception and attention switching are linked.
This group had no damage in the premotor and prefrontal cortex, in contrast to those who performed poorly on the time perception.
These results indicate that premotor and prefrontal cortex areas also contribute to accurate time perception.

Richard Ivry

Neural systems underlying timing processes may point to remedies for brain injuries that involve motor timing irregularities such as Parkinson’s disease, according to UC Berkeley’s Richard Ivry and Rebecca Spencer of UMass.

Rebecca Spencer

Medical University of South Carolina’s Catalin V. Buhusi and  Warren H. Meck of Duke University suggest that subjective time perception or psychological time is represented by multiple “internal clocks” that judge duration relative to the relevant time context.

Catalin V. Buhusi

Richard Ivry reported that the cerebellum can be considered as operating multiple “internal clocks,” suggesting a physiological basis for Buhusi and Meck’s multi-clock construct.

-*How do you manage time demands for future performance?

Please follow-share-like www.kathrynwelds.com and @kathrynwelds

RELATED POSTS:

Twitter: @kathrynwelds
Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary
Google+ google.com/+KathrynWelds
LinkedIn Open Group Psychology in Human Resources (Organisational Psychology)
Facebook Notes:

Kathryn Welds, PhD | Curated Research + Commentary

Consulting Organizational Psychologist | Change Consultant | Leadership+Career Master Coach | Coach Supervisor+Mentor Coach |

Tag Archives: Peter U. Tse

Greater Hemispheric Specialization, not Integration = Increased Creativity

How the Brain Perceives Time So You Can Manage Time Demands, not Time

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: