REVIEW article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Digital Learning Innovations
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1637506
This article is part of the Research TopicRedefining Learning in the Digital Age: Pedagogical Strategies and OutcomesView all 16 articles
The Impact of Brain Science Literacy on Creative Thinking: A Meta-Analytic Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1重庆师范大学智慧教育研究院, 重庆市, China
- 2重庆邮电大学通信与信息工程学院, 重庆市, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Creative thinking is essential for developing high-level innovative talents. However, its underlying neuroplastic mechanisms and effective educational interventions remain underexplored. This meta-analysis synthesizes data from 35 experimental studies (N = 14,688) to examine the effects of brain science literacy on creative thinking and its potential moderators. The results indicate that brain science literacy has a small but significant positive effect on creative thinking (g = 0.20, p = 0.003), with stronger effects observed in teaching strategy optimization (g = 0.32), student behavioral regulation (g = 0.37), and early childhood interventions (g = 0.70). The impact on originality (g = 0.53) was significantly stronger than on fluency (g = 0.20) and the overall creativity score (g = 0.26). The intervention effects varied across educational stages, with the most substantial benefits seen in early childhood (g = 0.70) and at the university level (g = 0.30). These findings suggest that enhancing brain science literacy can promote creative thinking by activating neuroplasticity, with differential impacts across developmental stages and creativity components. The study provides empirical support for integrating brain science literacy principles into educational practices and highlights the importance of matching intervention types to target populations.These findings suggest that improving brain science literacy can promote neuroplasticity and enhance creative thinking, with varying effects across developmental stages and creative components. The benefits observed in early childhood highlight the critical importance of brain science literacy-informed educational interventions during sensitive periods of cognitive development.This study provides solid empirical support for integrating neuroscience principles into educational practice, offering practical guidance for educational policy and curriculum design. Overall, brain science literacy appears to foster creativity through a dual pathway: neuroplasticity activation and developmental stage adaptation, presenting a focused framework for evidence-based neuroeducational interventions.
Keywords: neuroscience literacy1, creative thinking2, Moderating effectkeyword3, neural mechanism4, Meta-analysis5
Received: 29 May 2025; Accepted: 28 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 彭, 马, 张 and 周. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: 启蓉 彭, 重庆师范大学智慧教育研究院, 重庆市, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.