What is creativity, really?

Too many artists, scientists, and writers talk about their creative process as a blackbox—an ephemeral spark that’s difficult to explain and impossible to predict. But it’s not. Boden is one of the most influential cognitive scientists to think about creativity through a computational lens. Her work is rooted in the... See more

Long practice teaches an artist to direct their gaze in an unusually focused way; it trains them to repurpose areas of their brain; and it changes the very structure of the brain’s neural networks. Ocean’s unusual patterns of thought – and his unusually developed brain – were normal in trained artists. Other neurological researchers have shown that

... See more

• Divergent and Convergent Thinking: Creative thinking is a two-part process involving divergent thinking (generating novel ideas) and convergent thinking (narrowing down to the most useful idea).


• The Role of the Control Network:
  
  The "control network" plays a crucial role in this process by enabling flexible thinking, inhibiting distractions, and

... See more