The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler
Author:Steven Kotler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Wave
Published: 2020-11-02T00:00:00+00:00
THE IMAGINATION NETWORK
The imagination networkâto borrow psychologist Scott Barry Kaufmanâs monikerâor, more formally, the default mode network, is all about spontaneous thought.20 This system is active when weâre awake but not focused on anything in particularâwhich research shows is about 30 percent of the time. When switched on, itâs the brain in daydreaming mode, simulating alternative realities and testing out creative possibilities.21
Neurobiologically, this system includes the medial prefrontal cortex, the medial temporal lobe, the precuneus, and the posterior cingulate cortex.22 And once again, if we combine structure with function, we can start to see how these parts work together to make the greater whole known as creativity.
The medial prefrontal cortex is about theory of mind, or our ability to think about what others are thinking about, and creative self-expression.23 If youâre telling a joke to a friend and suddenly your friend starts crying, the medial prefrontal cortex notices the crying. It also tells you to stop telling the joke and start comforting your friend.
The medial temporal lobe is a memory structure, as is the precuneus, though this latter area is primarily involved in the retrieval of personal memories. Taken together, in our above example, once you make the creative decision to deviate from the joke and start comforting your friend, these two structures help you scour the databanks for previous times when jokes went bad and friends started crying. Their goal is to find other information that can help you decide exactly how to comfort your friend.
The precuneus takes this an extra step. Beyond memory, this area handles self-consciousness, self-related mental simulation, and random thought generation. If youâre telling that joke but suddenly imagine yourself at an amusement park, shrieking on a roller coaster, and feeling embarrassed in front of your dateâwell, blame your precuneus.
Finally, the posterior cingulate cortex allows us to integrate various internal thoughts into more coherent wholes, essentially gathering all the data generated by these other brain areas into a single idea.
Yet, these brain areas donât tell the full story.
At the start of this breakdown, our stated goal was to figure out how these networks work together to produce novel ideas that are useful. And hereâs the rub. Under normal circumstances, these networks donât work together.
The default mode network and the executive attention network operate in opposition. Typically, the activation of one causes the deactivation of the other. But this is not the case with creatives, who can keep both systems active at once and shift back and forth between them with far more fluidity than most.
This means, to return to all of our examples, creatives can start telling a joke to a friend, which requires spotlight attention. They can then notice that the friend has started crying, which is a novel signal that should serve to tighten that spotlight. Yet, instead, creatives will remember the time they shrieked on the roller coasterâwhich is a signal generated by the default mode network. Noncreatives would never notice, and instead keep their attention on the crying friend. But creatives
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