title: Hemispheric specialization and creative thinking: a meta-analytic review of lateralization of creativity.
abstract: In the last two decades research on the neurophysiological processes of creativity has found contradicting results. Whereas most research suggests right hemisphere dominance in creative thinking, left-hemisphere dominance has also been reported. The present research is a meta-analytic review of the literature to establish how creative thinking relates to relative hemispheric dominance. The analysis was performed on the basis of a non-parametric vote-counting approach and effect-size calculations of Cramer's phi suggest relative dominance of the right hemisphere during creative thinking. Moderator analyses revealed no difference in predominant right-hemispheric activation for verbal vs. figural tasks, holistic vs. analytical tasks, and context-dependent vs. context-independent tasks. Suggestions for further investigations with the meta-analytic and neuroscience methodologies to answer the questions of left hemispheric activation and further moderation of the effects are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Jacobs University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany. k.mihov@jacobs-university.de
authors.forename: Konstantin M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Mihov
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Denzler
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Förster
mesh_terms: D054022:Cerebrum / Q000502:physiology*; D003405:Creativity; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D013850:Thinking