ArticleCognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience2021
Noninvasive brain stimulation to lateral prefrontal cortex alters the novelty of creative idea generation.
Article in Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Consistent neural evidence to support novelty and appropriateness processing for creative thinking: a coordinated meta-analysis using activation likelihood estimation.Brain structure & function · 2026Pooled it
- Neural dynamics during the generation and evaluation of creative and non-creative ideas.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Hidden Brain States Reveal the Temporal Dynamics of Neural Oscillations During Metaphor Generation and Their Role in Verbal Creativity.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Brainstorming: Interbrain coupling in groups forms the basis of group creativity.Communications biology · 2024Article
- tDCS Anodal Stimulation of the Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Improves Creative Performance in Real-World Problem Solving.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Comparing transcranial direct current stimulation and transcranial random noise stimulation over left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus: Effects on divergent and convergent thinking.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Theories of the processes involved in creative cognition posit that cognitive control has a negative effect on creative idea generation but a positive effect on creative idea evaluation. Brain stimulation research has started to examine empirically the effects of cognitive control, with several reports of decreased cognitive control facilitating creative ideation. Such studies have shown how decreased cognitive control mechanisms facilitate creative idea generation, potentially by allowing participants access to less inhibited weaker-related associations, thereby increasing novelty. In the current study, we advance this line of work by investigating how cognitive control affects creative thinking, potentially inhibiting or facilitating novel idea generation based on task demands. Participants read sentences with the final word missing and were instructed to complete the sentence with an uncommon (but appropriate) ending. Participants performed this task while undergoing either anodal (excitatory), cathodal (inhibitory), or sham (control) transcranial direct current stimulation over their left prefrontal cortex. These responses were then rated for their novelty and appropriateness by an independent sample of raters. We found that anodal stimulation increased the appropriateness and decreased the novelty of participants' responses. Contrary to previous studies, we did not find that cathodal stimulation increased the novelty of participants' responses, which may be due to the nature of our task. Overall, we demonstrate how cognitive control mechanisms may inhibit novel idea generation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.