title: The neural coding of creative idea generation across adolescence and early adulthood.
abstract: Creativity is considered key to human prosperity, yet the neurocognitive principles underlying creative performance, and their development, are still poorly understood. To fill this void, we examined the neural correlates of divergent thinking in adults (25-30 years) and adolescents (15-17 years). Participants generated alternative uses (AU) or ordinary characteristics (OC) for common objects while brain activity was assessed using fMRI. Adults outperformed adolescents on the number of solutions for AU and OC trials. Contrasting neural activity for AU with OC trials revealed increased recruitment of left angular gyrus, left supramarginal gyrus, and bilateral middle temporal gyrus in both adults and adolescents. When only trials with multiple AU were included in the analysis, participants showed additional left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)/middle frontal gyrus (MFG) activation for AU compared to OC trials. Correspondingly, individual difference analyses showed a positive correlation between activations for AU relative to OC trials in left IFG/MFG and divergent thinking performance and activations were more pronounced in adults than in adolescents. Taken together, the results of this study demonstrated that creative idea generation involves recruitment of mainly left lateralized parietal and temporal brain regions. Generating multiple creative ideas, a hallmark of divergent thinking, shows additional lateral PFC activation that is not yet optimized in adolescence.
authors.affiliation: Brain and Development Lab, Department of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands ; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition Leiden, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sietske W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Kleibeuker
authors.affiliation: Brain and Development Lab, Department of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands ; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition Leiden, Netherlands ; Brain and Cognition, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands.
authors.forename: P Cédric M P
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Koolschijn
authors.affiliation: Brain and Development Lab, Department of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands ; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition Leiden, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Dietsje D
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Jolles
authors.affiliation: Brain and Cognition, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands ; Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Carsten K W
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: De Dreu
authors.affiliation: Brain and Development Lab, Department of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden, Netherlands ; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition Leiden, Netherlands ; Brain and Cognition, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Eveline A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Crone
keywords: adolescence; creative cognition; divergent thinking; fMRI