ArticleCognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience2019
Creativity is associated with a characteristic U-shaped function of alpha power changes accompanied by an early increase in functional coupling.
Article in Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 90 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acute and Chronic Physical Activity Increases Creative Ideation Performance: A Systematic Review and Multilevel Meta-analysis.Sports medicine - open · 2022Pooled it
- A Neurophysiological Evaluation of Cognitive Load during Augmented Reality Interactions in Various Industrial Maintenance and Assembly Tasks.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Trial
- Decoding the cascading architecture of creative ideation: an ERP study.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- The Interoceptive Brain: Confidence Ratings and Accuracy Scores are Independently and Differently Associated With Task-Related Alpha Power During the Heartbeat Tracking Task.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Emotion Induction Modulates Neural Dynamics Related to the Originality of Ideational Creativity.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Hidden Brain States Reveal the Temporal Dynamics of Neural Oscillations During Metaphor Generation and Their Role in Verbal Creativity.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Exploring the neural basis of creativity: EEG analysis of power spectrum and functional connectivity during creative tasks in school-aged children.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2025Article
- The impact of transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) on alpha coherence and verbal divergent thinking.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Transcranial direct current stimulation targeting the bilateral IFG alters cognitive processes during creative ideation.NPJ science of learning · 2024Article
- Metacontrol Regulates Creative Thinking: An EEG Complexity Analysis Based on Multiscale Entropy.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Predicting creative behavior using resting-state electroencephalography.Communications biology · 2024Article
- EEG-based study of design creativity: a review on research design, experiments, and analysis.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Review
- Alpha ERS-ERD Pattern during Divergent and Convergent Thinking Depends on Individual Differences on Metacontrol.Journal of Intelligence · 2023Article
- The impact of chronic pain on creative ideation: An examination of the underlying attention-related psychophysiological mechanisms.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2022Article
- The ambulatory battery of creativity: Additional evidence for reliability and validity.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Network oscillations imply the highest cognitive workload and lowest cognitive control during idea generation in open-ended creation tasks.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Creative, Antagonistic, and Angry? Exploring the Roots of Malevolent Creativity with a Real-World Idea Generation Task.The Journal of creative behavior · 2021Article
- Brain activation during the observation of real soccer game situations predicts creative goal scoring.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Article
- EEG signals respond differently to idea generation, idea evolution and evaluation in a loosely controlled creativity experiment.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- High Phase Synchronization in Alpha Band Activity in Older Subjects With High Creativity.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although there exists increasing knowledge about brain correlates underlying creative ideation in general, the specific neurocognitive mechanisms implicated in different stages of the creative thinking process are still under-researched. Some recent EEG studies suggested that alpha power during creative ideation varies as a function of time, with the highest levels of alpha power after stimulus onset and at the end of the creative thinking process. The main aim of the present study was to replicate and extend this finding by applying an individual differences approach, and by investigating functional coupling between long distance cortical sites during the process of creative ideation. Eighty-six participants performed the Alternate Uses (AU) task during EEG assessment. Results revealed that more original people showed increased alpha power after stimulus onset and before finalizing the process of idea generation. This U-shaped alpha power pattern was accompanied by an early increase in functional communication between frontal and parietal-occipital sites during the creative thinking process, putatively indicating activation of top-down executive control processes. Participants with lower originality showed no significant time-related variation in alpha power and a delayed increase in long distance functional communication. These findings are in line with dual process models of creative ideation and support the idea that increased alpha power at the beginning of the creative ideation process may indicate more associative modes of thinking and memory processes, while the alpha increases at later stages may indicate executive control processes, associated with idea elaboration/evaluation.
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