How semantic memory shapes the creative brain: Tracking longitudinal change in creative thinking via network science and machine learning modelling of brain and behavior

From engineering and design to scientific discovery, creative thinking is at the core of technological innovation and scientific progress. In recent years, cognitive and neuroscience research have begun to provide insight into the complexity of the creative mind. For example, we now know that how people organize concepts in their memory influences their capacity to make new connections between those concepts, and that such creative association making is carried out by the brain’s “default network”—a set of neural regions that give rise to spontaneous thinking. Many of these findings stem from individual differences research, asking what makes some people more creative than others at a single point in time. Yet this “static” view of creativity obscures the dynamic nature of human experience: our knowledge grows as we live and learn, and that knowledge growth likely plays an important role in how we think creatively. However, very little is known about how knowledge and experience shape the development of creative thinking. In the present research, we propose to study creativity development in the same people over time. Using tools from network science, we will build individual maps of each person’s semantic memory that estimates how they organize concepts in their minds (relevant for making creative associations), exploring how these semantic maps change within a given person over time and how this change relates to their creative thinking ability as they age. In addition, we will use longitudinal brain scanning (fMRI) to relate these semantic maps to brain activity during performance on a creative thinking task—tracking how individual growth within semantic memory relates to brain connections as individuals age—providing insight into the role of experience in the development of creativity. The project will provide a model to study creative thinking in educational contexts, allowing educators and researchers who aim to enhance creativity to monitor cognitive and brain systems relevant for creative thinking across the arts and sciences.