“Science has to catch up to art”

Sticking with the science theme started in my last post, Ted.com just posted this video of Charles Limb talking about some preliminary research into what happens when musicians creatively improvise in an fMRI scanner:

It’s interesting…ish but somehow comes across as a rather naïve attempt to split atoms with an elaborate vacuum cleaner. So far the findings are pretty meager, to say the least, and the questions based on these are very unenlightening:

Just for the fun of it, let’s make a cursory stab at providing some answers to these questions (without the aid of an expensive bunch of wires, magnets and electricity of course):

1: What is creative genius?

Extremely open minded focus.

2: Why does the brain seek creativity?

Because it’s pleasurable, solves problems and has a selection advantage.

3: How do we acquire creativity?

It’s in our genes, but is often inhibited and/or underdeveloped (see next question)

4: What factors disrupt creativity?

Stress, fear, distraction, poverty etc and in some cases their opposites ie: affluence, success, achievement etc (and possibly lying down in fMRI scanners)

5: Can creative behavior be learned?

I've argued in the past that the answer should be Yes, but to a degree this depends on what we mean by “creative” and “learned” and also on not getting too fussy about the difference between "creative behavior" (as the question asks) and creative ability (which seems likely to be influenced by a whole wealth of factors).

And lastly, if creativity behaves in any way differently when you're lying down as opposed to when you're standing up (as anger does¹) then the whole experiment will need to be repeated.

Hmm, it seems like there are probably better uses for an fMRI scanner at this time. Perhaps in the future, with finer instrumentation, better data gathering techniques and more sophisticated questions we might actually get some useful information. But despite this, I’m reminded of something Richard Feynman said about thinking processes and the ways thoughts are generated by different individuals.

This is extraordinary from a couple of perspectives: 1: the contestation of genius and 2: the evidence of, not exactly learning styles² as such, but different cognitive functioning leading to the same result but involving different cognitive load and therefore having differential influence on other cognitive functions (it relates closely to what is called "The Split Attention Effect"³). If Feynman was right, and there seems little reason to doubt it, then the hope of finding a neurological formula for creativity seems likely to be fanciful at best.

External References:
1: The Split Attention Effect
2: Learning Styles
3: Anger behaves differently in fMRI whilst lying down as opposed to standing up.