Neurophysiology of Creativity and Insight

Creative thinking plays a vital role in almost all aspects of human life, but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying creative thinking. Creativity is a complex cognitive behavior commonly defined as the ability to generate novel and useful ideas. In this Research Topic, we plan to clarify some questions on the psychophysiology of creative thinking and insight, psychological, and neurophysiological factors influencing creative outputs. We expect to present the latest data on the theme provided by EEG/ERP and fMRI methods. We hope this Research Topic will allow us to consider functional underpinnings of insight in creativity processes - including neurophysiological signs that underlie original and insightful decisions, neurophysiological differences in creative thinking, and insightfulness in different experimental models of creative thinking including heuristic, verbal, figural, and social creative tasks. We welcome authors to participate in the discussion on creativity and insight in this Research Topic.

Creative activity is usually defined as the creation of new, extraordinary ideas or images with the avoidance of stereotypes and traditional schemes in the performance of any task, successfully solving difficult situations with the lack of information. One of the most mystifying events in creative and cognitive thinking is insight. The construction of a theoretical model of the creative brain is possible when we jointly consider the diversity of studies: the brain activity data in both - creative activity and insight, and at rest in everyday life of ordinary people and art professionals. Structural and functional results will be considered in order to explore the anatomical and functional features of the creative brain and creative activity.

Original research, brief reports, and review papers are welcome which focus on:
- neurophysiology of creative processes (EEG, fMRI, fNIRS, and other physiological data on brain activity during creative task performance )
- neurophysiology of insight in creative and cognitive decision making (ERP and visualization data at insight tasks)
- neurophysiology of creative brain (structural and functional data of resting state related to creative abilities)
- development and changes of creative processes across life and according to professional creative/art activity.

Keywords: Creativity, insight, psychophysiology, EEG mapping, ERP, (f)MRI, cognition, intelligence, information processes

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