7
Biological and Neuronal Underpinnings of Creativity in the Arts
General creative processes apply not only to the arts but also to science, technology, business, education, humor, interpersonal relationships, and many other domains of human expressions. The concept of creativity typically refers to the innovation of something new and positive for society, something that transcends the traditional and “received” knowledge. Even when the moment of innovation seems at times to be nonlinear, accidental, or to “come from nowhere,” it comes on top of a body of mentally stored knowledge in the brain. Indeed, the backdrop for the creative innovation is the societal culture of the creating individual. Creativity also implies cognitive flexibility and rich associations among units of stored knowledge. How the cognitive departure from the norm is achieved, why some individuals in society can reach it, and what the underlying neuronal connectivity in the brain might be have long been sources of great interest and discussion.
Art creativity might be a special case of general creativity because with art, artistic talent and skill are critically interwoven into the artistic formula. Talent appears to have innate, inborn features, and skills can both be learned by the untalented as well as practiced by the talented. Where in the process of producing art does creativity come in: this is the principal question. Part of the answer might lie in the fact that spontaneous art production is an activity unique to humans and thus subject to its own distinctive rules of operation. Thus far, the evidence gathered from professional artists with brain damage does not point to any specific neuronal circuitry, hemispheric laterality, anatomical localization, or functional pathway that gives rise to creativity or to talent (Zaidel, 2005, 2010). Subsequent sections of this chapter discuss these findings and trace the biological and neuroanatomical backgrounds of creativity.
Biology: Comparative Considerations
Viewed within a biological perspective, the general notion of creativity, as in “innovation,” is argued by some to not be unique to humans; if we look for the antecedents of general creativity, we find several examples of innovation by animals (Laland & Reader, 2010; Kaufman, Butt, Kaufman, & Colbert-White, 2011; Benson-Amram & Holekamp, 2012; Taylor, Miller, & Gray, 2012). As Bonner (1980) describes, there are several, by now classic, observations of innovation in animals. Hinde and Fisher (1951) described how titmice birds in the United Kingdom cleverly managed to peck holes in the aluminum foil lids of milk bottles left by the milk delivery person and then managed to lap up the milk; the practice began in one location but then spread to other locations in Britain. Similarly, researchers in Japan observed the behavior of a female monkey (named Imo) spontaneously washing sand off of her sweet potato in the river water before placing it in her mouth, and then this behavior was taken over by the rest of the monkey group (Kawai, 1965; Kawamura, 1959). Subsequently, the same female monkey innovated a method for washing sand off of wheat grains by dumping them in the river water and then scooping them from the surface (by which time they were all clean). Thus, human creativity, whether in the arts or not, has components that originated in biological ancestry.
Moreover, brain size strongly correlates with innovation in some animals; in birds, those regions are known as the hyperstriatum and neostriatum, whereas in primates the areas involve the isocortex and the striatum (Lefebvre, Reader, & Sol, 2004). These human brain regions are the association cortical areas. Looking at birds, a number of meta-analytic studies have found that deviations from typical behavior that enhance survival are associated with larger brains (Lefebvre et al., 2004). The rate of innovation is also highly related to tool use, learning, and, among birds, abilities dealing with seasonal changes. Indeed, according to one view, brain size evolution in birds has been driven by regions controlling behavior rather than by environmental changes (Wyles, Kunkel, & Wilson, 1983). By now, the countless observations of bird behavior, particularly with regard to innovation, strongly support this assumption (Reader & Laland, 2002; Laland & Reader, 2010).
With regard to primates, field observations have documented numerous instances of innovative behaviors (Byrne & Whiten, 1990; Goodall, 1986), typically in the context of deception rather than in technological skills. The driving forces behind the behaviors are hypothesized to be social. One of the hallmarks of primate behavioral evolution is the development of social interactions, interdependence, and complexity of hierarchy. Thus, survival depends heavily on cunning and flexibility of cognitive responses (Byrne, 2003; Byrne & Bates, 2010).
Intelligence Level and Creativity
Intelligence level plays a pivotal role in creativity. With animals, this is difficult to measure, but in humans we can measure it. Studying the history of a number of highly creative individuals in the arts and sciences, Howard Gardner (1994) unraveled a pattern of several shared factors. Some of those characteristics include at the very minimum a moderate level of intelligence. Robert Sternberg (1997; Sternberg & O’Hara, 1999) also included intelligence level in creativity and considered it to be a critical component; he listed motivation, knowledge, personality, cognition, and the environment as being important as well. The implication is that the creative process in individuals with compromised intelligence is seriously constricted.
Intelligence, as measured by the Intelligence Quotient (IQ), has been studied in recent years with an eye toward its neuroanatomical and neurofunctional underpinnings. Research with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revealed that the brain’s functional and structural organization is different for those with high versus low intelligence in normal individuals (Fink & Benedek, this vol.; Jung & Haier, this vol.; Neubauer & Fink, 2009; Neubauer, Grabner, Fink, & Neuper, 2005). Genetic factors linking genes to intelligence have also recently been identified (Hulshoff Pol et al., 2006; Li et al., 2009), and this reinforces the notion of its neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and neurofunctional underpinnings. At the same time, the findings of Deary and colleagues caution that genetics alone cannot explain expressions of intelligence (Deary, Penke, & Johnson, 2010). Cultural domains within which intelligence is expressed interact with the genetic bases (see Laland, Odling-Smee, & Myles, 2010; Laland, 2011). Indeed, creativity involves the mental possession of the cultural knowledge, be it specialized as scientific opinions about one issue or another, school movements in art, or financial business practices.
Although the genetics of intelligence continues to be researched and measured, the same cannot be said for the genetics of creativity. This is largely because quantifying creativity in ways that everyone can agree upon continues to be debated, whereas with intelligence we have actual numerical values for IQ, even while there is still debate over the meaning of the IQ itself. In any case, psychometric measures of creativity are predefined and reflect laboratory testing of creativity rather than spontaneous moments of “eureka” and insights experienced in daily life (whether by an artist, a scientist, or anyone else).
An important study, unrelated to art, by Jung and associates (Jung et al., 2009) attempted to link neuroanatomical regions with behavioral (psychometric) measures of creativity through the use of MRI. They found that volumetric cortical thickness in certain regions correlated with the psychometric measures of creativity. The thickness of the left lateral orbito-frontal region, the right angular gyrus, and the right cingulate cortex were highly correlated with creativity scores. A further recent study implicated the integrity of white matter in creativity as measured by psychometric tests (Jung, Grazioplene, Caprihan, Chavez, & Haier, 2010). Another creativity-related study (Fink et al., 2009) where subjects provided verbal alternate uses has shown increased activity in the left inferior parietal gyrus and angular gyrus. Viewed together, the neuroanatomical distance of these regions from each other and their laterality strongly suggest that neural connectivity is a critical component of the creative process. Whether or not all creative, original, innovative, groundbreaking activities are connectivity dependent versus region dependent remains to be explored in future studies.
Talent and Neuroanatomy
As stated in the opening paragraphs of this chapter, the issue of creativity in art is entangled with artistic talent and skill. What is artistic talent? Can it be separated from creativity? To what extent can talent be manipulated, modified, and made to grow as a function of creativity? At the very minimum, talent is an inborn ability to depict ideas in a representational way (on canvas or through any other medium), whether emanating from reality or from one’s mind, in such a way that audiences are attracted to the representation. Obviously, artistic talent ranges from amateur to professional, from the occasional dabbler to the prolific artisan. The creative process can apply at each level of the talent continuum with the impact of the creative accomplishment likely to be incrementally noticeable at the higher ends of the continuum. We would expect increased cognitive flexibility and wide mental associations as well at those higher ends.
Although art is a symbolic system of communication unique to humans and ubiquitously present everywhere human groups live, artistic talent does not follow a normal curve within the population. Its rarity makes talent a highly prized commodity. Indeed, as has been suggested, identifying and appreciating artistically talented individuals could have been a critical pivotal feature in the formation and advancement of Homo sapiens society (Dissanayake, 1995; Lewis-Williams, 2002). Moreover, inheritance of talent is nonlinear: Highly talented artists, for example, do not necessarily transmit their “talent genes” to their children. Bringing to mind all the talented artists and scientists from the last 200 years alone very rarely brings to mind their progeny, and in such rare cases only children, not grandchildren. The same principle of lack of seemingly direct inheritance applies to creativity.
The special case of artistic autistic savants is relevant here. Talent for drawing and composing realistic spatial depictions is preserved in a tiny fraction of individuals suffering from autism, a severe social communication condition sometimes accompanied by mental retardation. These individuals are known as artistic autistic savants. The remarkable aspect of the condition is that despite the extensive damage in the brain, the nature of which is not completely understood (Minshew & Keller, 2010), islands of drawing talent are preserved. Yet, very little creativity is exhibited in such cases. By and large, instruction and teaching do not help the individual go beyond his or her talent, unlike normal talented artists who improve, change, and benefit from instruction (Sacks, 1995, 2004).
Lessons from Brain Damage: Creativity in Professional Artists with Brain Damage
The brain underpinning of our psychological capacities is traditionally inferred from consequences of damage to the brain. The fields of neuropsychology and neurology are dedicated to uncovering the behavioral consequences of brain damage. For example, damage to Broca’s area, which lies in the inferior portion of the left frontal lobe, toward the lobe’s posterior, leads to severe speaking difficulties and some comprehension problems of sentences laden with specific grammatical constructions (specifically, conjunctions). In contrast, damage to Wernicke’s area, which lies in the left temporal lobe in the posterior region of the auditory region, leads to severe deficits in comprehension of spoken and written language. Damage to the right inferior region spanning the temporal and occipital lobes can lead to profound difficulties in recognizing previously familiar faces. These are all examples of what is known as functional localization in the brain. With regard to creativity and its brain localization, we do not yet have enough knowledge to pinpoint it.
However, visual and musical artists who have practiced their craft for many years prior to the neurological event that caused the brain damage can help reveal and point the way to the neuroanatomical underpinnings of creativity (Viskontas & Miller, this vol.; Zaidel, 2009, 2010). The damage disrupts normal neuronal connectivity, and the effects of the disruption can be measured in behavioral performance by the patient. By studying their artistic output following the event, we can hone in on the relevant brain regions and pathways (Bogousslavsky & Boller, 2005; Rose, 2004; Zaidel, 2005). With localized brain damage due to stroke, tumor, or surgical tissue excision, the behavior exhibited by the patient is attributed to neuronal disruption of the localized area. By contrast, when the damage is diffuse throughout the brain, as is the case in various dementing conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or frontotemporal dementia (and other such diseases), large areas of the brain are affected. With the latter kind of case, it is difficult to attribute the consequences of the damage to a specific region and its specialized neuronal attributes.
Compared to the incidence of brain damage in the rest of the population, the number of documented such cases of artists is very small. Critically, examination of their postdamage output has revealed that on the whole they (1) continue to produce art, sometimes prolifically, and (2) their creativity does not diminish (Zaidel, 2005, 2009, 2010). Importantly, artists with AD produce art well into the disease, even as the condition worsens, with no visible reduction in their creativity (e.g., Fornazzari, 2005). Interestingly, a study of aesthetic preference in AD patients found no statistically significant difference in aesthetic preferences between the patients and normal control subjects (Halpern, Ly, Elkin-Frankston, & O’Connor, 2008). However, they do cease to produce art when severe motoric deficits develop and profoundly restrict their hand movements.
Moreover, patients with frontotemporal dementia do not become more creative following the onset of the disease (Rankin et al., 2007). A recent study of seventeen patients (nonartists) suffering from a frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia revealed that they have poor and diminished creativity (de Souza et al., 2010). When artistic talent is observed for the first time with such patients (e.g., Mell, Howard, & Miller, 2003; Miller, Boone, Cummings, Read, & Mishkin, 2000), creativity is not the source of the artistic production; rather, the removal of inhibition due to damage to the frontal lobes is the cause. That is, the productions in these patients are not necessarily creative but rather can be interpreted to be displays of previously repressed, latent artistic talent. As with all lessons from brain damage, what we learn from such cases is that in the normal intact brain, the frontal lobes play a role in creativity.
The importance of studying visual artists with brain damage is that light is shed on the relationship between art and brain through examination of their postdamage works compared to their predamage output. The key questions concern any alterations in creativity or loss of talent or skill. Approximately 45 to 55 cases with unilateral damage or with diffuse damage have been described thus far in the neurological literature, and a review of the majority of these cases indicates that on the whole artists go on producing art despite the damage’s laterality or localization (Zaidel, 2005). So, together, these results suggest that artistic creativity, or talent and skill, as are ideas, concepts, and symbolic cognition, are generally diffusely represented in the brain; no single “center,” region, or pathway controls art-related creativity, cognition, and production.
Furthermore, no specific technique or style alterations are associated with localization of the damage, or its etiology. Artists adhering to the abstract art genre (style) adhere to it following brain damage, and the same is true of the realistic style pre- and postdamage. This implies that the neurological foundations of genre, too, are diffusely represented, and through redundancy of functional representation they survive regional damage. Some brain-damaged artists develop techniques to compensate for loss of perceptual and cognitive specialization. However, these techniques are subtle and too complex to group into coherent categories.
Thus far, any seemingly art-related alterations following brain damage in established professional artists can be explained by general defects in perceptual and cognitive processing that are observed in nonartists suffering from similar brain damage. One example is loss of accurate depictions of three-dimensional space (3D) with right parietal lobe damage (De Renzi, 1982). Hemi-neglect or hemi-inattention of the left half of space is another example. This condition typically occurs following right parietal lobe damage, and its manifestation in visual artists is lack of completion of the left half of the canvas. In the majority of cases, however, neglect symptoms are short lived, lasting approximately six weeks or so. The presence of the neglect syndrome has been attributed to imbalance created by the damage between intact and diseased tissue (Zaidel, 2005), as well as to an abnormal control of the healthy tissue in the left hemisphere over the right half of space (i.e., the space that is not ignored) (Kinsbourne, 1977). In sum, deficits in perceptual deficits can be found in both artists and nonartists and when observed in the latter do not inform us of art-related neural substrates. Thus, the cognitive functions specialized in both cerebral hemispheres should be regarded as being involved in the whole artistic process.
What can we glean from neurological cases of individuals who have not practiced art prior to suffering brain damage, and commence to practice art after the damage? To begin with, producing art per se is not necessarily creative. The production is a reflection of many things, including personal wishes and thoughts, talent, skills, and intelligence. Turning to art following the damage can be explained in terms of alternatives to lost communicative cognitive functions so that the art becomes a substitute for the loss of previously used communication modes (e.g., speaking, writing). With art, particularly drawing and painting, a new method of communication is established. Published illustrations of such productions do not necessarily bespeak of creativity (Pollak, Mulvenna, & Lythgoe, 2007). Moreover, judging from the visual details and quantity of works, the current thinking is that art production by these neurological cases has a strong obsessive-compulsive feature (Chatterjee, 2006; Finkelstein, Vardi, & Hod, 1991; Lythgoe, Polak, Kalmus, de Haan, & Khean, 2005). This, in turn, implies an interaction between the neuronal underpinning of the obsessive-compulsive disorder and some types of art expression.
It should be emphasized that acquired damage to the right or left hemisphere does not lead to disappearance, abolishment, or elimination of artistic creativity. The damage does not prevent continuation of art production regardless of its etiology, laterality, or extent (Lakke, 1995). This suggests a wide and diffuse representation of the function of art creativity in the brain, as well as talent and skill. Several spared neuronal circuitries seem to go on functioning despite the presence of damage. The clue to brain and creativity, then, might lie in the actions of neurotransmitters. The following section addresses this issue.
Neurotransmitters and Artists with Parkinson’s Disease
Artists suffering from Parkinson’s disease (PD) can help shed further light on the issues under discussion here. The disease is characterized by tremors and severe depletion of dopamine, and as the disease progresses, motor coordination becomes severely compromised. Treatment consists in medically increasing levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Lakke (1999) reported that despite suffering from PD, the artists in his studies continued to produce visual art, and this despite having a tremor in their dominant hand. Some adjusted their art by utilizing the advantages conferred by the tremor. Later, reports of PD patients, of both artists and nonartists, linked dopamine agonist medication to artistic output and to a strong obsessive-compulsive component in the art production. Schrag and Trimble (2001) describe the case of a talented PD patient who began to write high-quality poems within the first month after initiation of dopamine agonist medication (lisuride as well as levodopa), although he had not written poetry previously. He wrote ten poems in the first year. His productivity went uninterrupted and eventually he won an important poetry prize. It should be mentioned that his grandfather on his mother’s side was an accomplished poet. Schrag and Trimble suggest that the poetry writing could be due to the loss of inhibition (because of frontal lobe damage), which could have facilitated the literary productivity, as well as the stimulation induced by the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. The implication is that an alteration in neurotransmitter balance in the brain together with specific neuroanatomical brain alterations can contribute to enhanced artistic creativity. Obviously, artistic talent has to be in place (in the brain) to begin with, or else no amount of disinhibition, frontal lobe damage, or neurotransmitter imbalance would help artistically.
Walker and colleagues (Walker, Warwick, & Cercy, 2006) reported on the enhancement of productivity in a case of a talented visual artist who, following initiation of dopamine medication, increased his drawing and sketching activity. Similarly, Kulisevsky and colleagues (2009) presented an amateur PD artist in whom enhanced dopamine medication resulted in increased painting activity plus a change in personal artistic technique. Schwingenschuh and colleagues (2010) discussed four successful artistic PD patients (a playwright, a fiction writer, and two professional painters) who, after receiving dopamine agonist medication, engaged in compulsive artistic productive output. All of these published reports are of cases of individuals who prior to their disease onset were talented, practicing artists. The disease condition did not obliterate their talent or creativity. The specific medication of dopamine replacement contributed to enhanced productivity of a compulsive nature (Chatterjee, Hamilton, & Amorapanth, 2006). The interplay of the frontotemporal lobes and dopamine has been emphasized by Flaherty’s (2005) study, although, as mentioned above, frontotemporal dementia patients do not become more creative following the onset of the disease (Rankin et al., 2007; de Souza et al., 2010).
By inference to the normal brain, the foregoing suggests that the dopaminergic system and frontal lobe regions are indeed involved in positive creativity. Recently, de Manzano and associates (2010) suggested that the D2 receptor in the dopaminergic signaling system, particularly in the thalamus, plays an important role in creativity of healthy, psychiatrically free individuals. The frontal lobes play a major role in planning ahead, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, and the thalamus is an important relay station in the brain; these are features of the mind that contribute to rich forms of creativity.
The threshold for the effects of dopamine in the creative process is unknown at the present time. The density of D2 receptors could explain individual variability in creativity, for example. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is involved in widely varied human behavior, including sensations of pleasure, impulse control problems, drug addiction, and gambling (Flaherty, 2005). Whether or not dopamine in conjunction with intact functioning of several brain regions contributes to remarkable creativity needs to be answered by future research.
Disinhibition, Neuronal Circuitry, and Neuronal Connectivity
As noted in the introductory paragraph to this chapter, creativity consists of transcending the given, accepted, and common knowledge. We have known for a long time that when there is damage to the frontal lobes, patients exhibit behavioral disinhibition: they use curse words, engage in inappropriate behavior, wear unkempt clothing when out in public, and engage in reckless activities (Fuster, 2001). Does this mean that patients with frontal lobe damage are creative? Not necessarily. Indeed, according to a recent paper, they become anything but creative (de Souza et al., 2010). The frontal lobes have rich connections to the rest of the brain, including regions that are critical for memory, concept formation, and problem solving. We can, however, obtain insights into the brain’s underpinnings of creativity from research on decision making particularly as related to overcoming inhibition. Aron and associates (2007) have implicated the prefrontal cortex and the basal-ganglia network in overcoming inhibitory neural circuitries, ones that impose inhibition on impulsive behavior. In decision-making research, what is of interest is what happens in the brain when people overcome the status quo knowledge. Creativity, after all, is the process of introducing something new, something over and above the given and the known. Fleming and associates (2010) asked subjects to detect visual stimuli in a paradigm that varied the difficulty level while they were being scanned with fMRI. They found increased activity in the subthalamic nucleus when the status quo was overcome with a difficult decision. Furthermore, their data analysis confirmed a neuronal circuitry involving the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia in status quo rejection. Together, everything else being equal, this pathway may be involved in transcending the given, established status quo of knowledge. By inference, then, the pathway would be involved in the creative process.
Creativity in Artists Is Prescient
Unbound by rigid rules such as those imposed in scientific investigations, successful artists are free to let their minds soar, and this, in combination with their talent and intelligence, enables some of them to experiment and produce highly original works (Miller, 2005). They are unbound by the cognitive associations required by highly detailed scientific knowledge. Consequently, artists have greater freedom in expressing and exploring the limits of creativity. Ultimately, art in all its formats—literature, poetry, music, painting, film, sculpture, dance, theater, or photography—reflects the mind of the artist, whether he or she has a normal brain or is an autistic savant, a person with frontotemporal dementia, a patient who had unilateral stroke, or an exceptional artist such as Monet, Picasso, or Modigliani. The artist’s studio, whatever and wherever it is, is where the workings of the creative mind are continuously tested. Indeed, visual artists have often inspired scientists to view their research projects with a fresh and creative perspective (Miller, 2000).
All of this suggests that artistic creativity permits infinite combinatorial possibilities. In a speculative vein, it may be that the imperfect, unbalanced display of creativity is precisely what creativity is: a process that computes deviations and incongruities in the normal pattern of neuronal activity. The underlying neural circuitry, electrical and chemical, appears to be nonlinear. And, importantly, as mentioned earlier, creativity is not unique to art; we see it in science, technology, business, politics, and all around us.
Conclusion
Creativity and innovation are not unique to humans. Such behaviors in animals (birds, monkeys, apes) suggests that nonhuman brain mechanisms are fine-tuned to deal with experience in innovative ways, that the roots of creativity originated in the human biological ancestry. With humans, these ways are expressed in creativity in the arts, science, business, technology, and daily life.
The fact that established, professional artists suffering from damage to different cortical regions nevertheless continue to produce art with retained creativity implies the absence of a single neuronal circuitry for creativity. The inseparable interaction of artistic skill and talent from the factor of creativity adds to the complexity of the issue. We have also seen that neurochemical factors play a role in human creativity, as is intelligence and its genetic inheritance. Dopamine has recently been implicated with creativity, and this is an important neuroscientific lead in the quest. So far, psychometric tests have been used in this context of the dopamine; predefined laboratory tests, however, do not necessarily characterize spontaneous creativity such as “eureka” moments or the type of creativity displayed by established artists and scientists. A complex interplay of neural factors contributes to creativity, and its components are yet to be deciphered. It would be neat and convenient if we could pinpoint the process that gives rise to creativity, but the brain—as many other biological, chemical, and physical systems—does not follow regular, orderly rules. In sum, it may be that the imperfect, unbalanced display of human creativity is precisely what creativity is: a particular yet irregular neuronal process reflecting deviations in the steady pattern of neuronal activity.
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