Neural Representations of Conceptual Fixation during Creative Imagination

A large body of research has revealed that viewing example image stimuli tends to constrain creative idea generation. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying such visual fixation in creative cognition are unclear. In the present experiment, we explored whether example images impacted creative imagination and patterns of neural activity within brain regions associated with visual object recognition. Participants first viewed example images (ambiguous line drawings) accompanied by high-constraint and low-constraint labels. High-constraint labels resembled the line drawings, whereas low constraint labels did not. Next, participants imagined new labels for the same line drawings, with the initial labels removed. Consistent with our predictions, semantic distance analysis comparing cue labels to newly generated labels showed lower average semantic distance (i.e., less creative ideas) on high-constraint trials compared to low-constraint trials. Using representational similarity analysis, we also demonstrated that neural pattern similarity was anticorrelated (less similar) from object recognition to high-constraint imagination trials within the right inferior temporal gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus, and right superior occipital gyrus. Broadly, these findings suggest that salient visual examples may guide the formation of strong mental representations that constrain creative imagination. This research also offers a first step toward identifying neurocognitive signatures associated with the effortful process of producing new, creative ideas following exposure to fixating examples–particularly at the early level of object recognition/representation in the ventral visual stream.