title: Individual differences in verbal creative thinking are reflected in the precuneus.
abstract: There have been many structural and functional imaging studies of creative thinking, but combining structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) investigations with respect to creative thinking is still lacking. Thus, the aim of the present study was to explore the associations among inter-individual verbal creative thinking and both regional homogeneity and cortical morphology of the brain surface. We related the local functional homogeneity of spontaneous brain activity to verbal creative thinking and its dimensions--fluency, originality, and flexibility--by examining these inter-individual differences in a large sample of 268 healthy college students. Results revealed that people with high verbal creative ability and high scores for the three dimensions of creativity exhibited lower regional functional homogeneity in the right precuneus. Both cortical volume and thickness of the right precuneus were positively associated with individual verbal creativity and its dimensions. Moreover, originality was negatively correlated with functional homogeneity in the left superior frontal gyrus and positively correlated with functional homogeneity in the right occipito-temporal gyrus. In contrast, flexibility was positively correlated with functional homogeneity in the left superior and middle occipital gyrus. These findings provide additional evidence of a link between verbal creative thinking and brain structure in the right precuneus--a region involved in internally--focused attention and effective semantic retrieval-and further suggest that local functional homogeneity of verbal creative thinking has neurobiological relevance that is likely based on anatomical substrates.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Qun-Lin
authors.initials: QL
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Center for the Developing Brain, Child Mind Institute, New York 10022, USA; Laboratory for Functional Connectome and Development, Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science and Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Ting
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Wen-Jing
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Ya-Dan
authors.initials: YD
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Jiang-Zhou
authors.initials: JZ
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Kang-Cheng
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA.
authors.forename: Roger E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Beaty
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Qing-Lin
authors.initials: QL
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; Laboratory for Functional Connectome and Development, Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science and Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Xi-Nian
authors.initials: XN
authors.lastname: Zuo
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China. Electronic address: qiuj318@swu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qiu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003405:Creativity; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cortical morphology; Local functional homogeneity; Precuneus; Verbal creativity