Can clouds dance? Part 2: an ERP investigation of passive conceptual expansion

Why creatives don't find the oddball odd: Neural and psychological evidence for atypical salience processing

Creativity has previously been linked with various attentional phenomena, including unfocused or broad attention. Although this has typically been interpreted through an executive functioning framework, such phenomena may also arise from atypical incentive salience processing. Across two studies, we examine this hypothesis both neurally and psychologically. First we examine the relationship between figural creativity and event-related potentials during an audio-visual oddball task, finding that rater creativity of drawings is associated with a diminished P300 response at midline electrodes, while abstractness and elaborateness of the drawings is associated with an altered distribution of the P300 over posterior electrodes. These findings support the notion that creativity may involve an atypical attribution of salience to prominent information. We further explore the incentive salience hypothesis by examining relationships between creativity and a psychological indicator of incentive salience captured by participants' ratings of enjoyment (liking) and their motivation to pursue (wanting) diverse real world rewards, as well as their positive spontaneous thoughts about those rewards. Here we find enhanced motivation to pursue activities as well as a reduced relationship between the overall tendency to enjoy rewards and the tendency to pursue them. Collectively, these findings indicate that creativity may be associated with atypical allocation of attentional and motivational resources to novel and rewarding information, potentially allowing more types of information access to attentional resources and motivating more diverse behaviors. We discuss the possibility that salience attribution in creatives may be less dependent on task-relevance or hedonic pleasure, and suggest that atypical salience attribution may represent a trait-like feature of creativity.

Neural correlates of unconventional verb extensions reveal preschoolers' analogical abilities

In the current event-related potential (ERP) study, we assessed 4-year-olds' ability to extend verbs to new action events on the basis of abstract similarities. Participants were presented with images of actions (e.g., peeling an orange) while hearing sentences containing a conventional verb (e.g., peeling), a verb sharing an abstract relation (i.e., an analogical verb, e.g., undressing), a verb sharing an object type (i.e., an object-related verb, e.g., pressing) with the action, or a pseudoverb (e.g., kebraying). The amplitude of the N400 gradually increased as a function of verb type-from conventional verbs to analogical verbs to object-related verbs to pseudoverbs. These findings suggest that accessing the meaning of a verb is easier when it shares abstract relations with the expected verb. Our results illustrate that measuring brain signals in response to analogical word extensions provides a useful tool to investigate preschools' analogical abilities.

Conventionality determines the time course of indirect replies comprehension: An ERP study

Indirect language comprehension requires decoding both the literal meaning and the intended meaning of an utterance, in which pragmatic inference is involved. This study tests the role of conventionality in the time course of indirect reply processing by comparing conventional and non-conventional indirect replies with direct reply, respectively. We constructed discourses which consist of a context and a dialogue with one question (e.g., May I buy a necklace for you) and one reply (e.g., I really have too many). The reply utterance was segmented into three phrases and presented orderly for EEG recording, e.g., with the subject as the first phrase (e.g., I), the adverbial as the second phrase (e.g., really), and the predicate as the third phrase (e.g., have too many). Our results showed that for conventional indirect replies, the second phrase elicited a larger anterior negativity, and the third phrase elicited a larger anterior N400 compared with those in direct replies. By contrast, for the non-conventional indirect reply, only the third phrase elicited a larger late negativity than the direct replies. These findings suggest that conventionality determines the time course of the pragmatic inferences for the most relevant interpretation during indirect replies comprehension.

Cognitive control in creative discovery: The gap between ideal and reality

Creative discovery involves discovering the additional values of existing things in the environment by identifying the novel associations between seemingly unrelated things; the judgment made in this process is expected to be accurate but not entirely correct. From the perspective of cognitive processing, what is the difference between the ideal and real states of creative discovery? This is largely unknown. In this study, a daily life scenario was presented, and a great number of seemingly unrelated tools were presented for participants to discover valuable tools. Electrophysiological activity was recorded when participants identified tools, and we then retrospectively analyzed the differences between responses. Compared with usual tools, unusual tools evoked greater N2, N400 and late sustained potential (LSP) amplitudes, which was likely associated with the monitoring and resolution of cognitive conflicts. Moreover, unusual tools evoked smaller N400 and greater LSP amplitudes when correctly identified as usable than when identified as unusable; this result suggested that creative discovery in the ideal state should depend on the cognitive control involved in resolving conflicts. However, in the comparison between subjectively rated usable and unusable tools, smaller N400 and greater LSP amplitudes were observed only when unusual tools could be identified by expanding the application scope but not by releasing functional fixedness; this outcome suggested that creative discovery in the real state was not always influenced by the cognitive control involved in resolving conflicts. The difference in cognitive control that should be exerted and that was actually exerted to identify novel associations was discussed.

Processing different types of iconicity in Chinese transferred epithet comprehension: An ERP study

Transferred epithet can be regarded as a reflection of semantic markedness since the modifier and the modified conflict with each other and lead to semantic deviation; yet the corresponding processing mechanism is less studied. The present study examined the neurocognitive mechanism of Chinese transferred epithet comprehension by employing ERP technique from the perspective of Iconicity of Markedness. Participants were required to read materials with different types of semantic markedness, namely unmarked linguistic expression (literal sentences) and marked linguistic expression (transferred epithets), and then judge whether the targets were words or pseudo-words. In terms of semantic markedness, the targets are words reflecting the unmarked semantic meaning of literal sentences and marked semantic meaning of transferred epithets respectively. The target words after transferred epithets elicited a larger N400 and a smaller LPC than those in literal sentences. These results suggest that processing sentences with marked and unmarked iconicity involve different neural mechanisms, with the former requiring more cognitive efforts to extract the similarity features.

Comprehending scientific metaphors in the bilingual brain: Evidence from event-related potentials

While the processing mechanisms of novel and conventional metaphors were widely investigated in previous monolingual studies, little attention has been devoted to how metaphoric utterances are processed by the bilingual brain as well as how scientific context might modulate such processes. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), this paper investigates the way in which scientific metaphors are electrophysiologically processed in Chinese (L1) and English (L2), with the aim of investigating the different mechanisms for understanding metaphorical language in first (L1) and second (L2) languages. By time-locking the N400 and later LPC time windows, the research show how meaning integration differs between L1 and L2 at different stages when comprehending figurative language. We found that compared with Chinese scientific metaphors, English scientific metaphors elicited greater N400, smaller late positive component (LPC), and greater late negativity, and English literals elicited greater late negativity. Our findings suggest that the dynamics of processing figurative meaning in bilingual brains over time show a complex pattern, with language, context, inference and salience jointly modulating temporal dynamics and possible cerebral asymmetries, supporting the revised hierarchical model.

Is the Processing of Chinese Verbal Metaphors Simulated or Abstracted? Evidence From an ERP Study

The theory of embodied semantics holds that verbal metaphors are strongly grounded in sensorimotor experience. Many studies have proven that besides sensorimotor simulation, the comprehension of verbal metaphors also requires semantic abstraction. But the interaction between simulation and abstraction, as well as the time course of metaphorical meaning integration, is not well understood. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether embodiment or abstraction, or both, is employed in the processing of Chinese verbal metaphor. Participants were asked to read subject-verb metaphorical, verb-object metaphorical, literal-concrete and literal-abstract sentences, and the target words were measured at the verb and the object of each sentence. The results revealed that a similar N400 effect was elicited by the target verbs in the verb-object metaphorical and the literal-concrete sentences, and a similar P600/LPC effect was induced by the target verbs in the subject-verb metaphorical and the literal-abstract sentences, reflecting that the verb-object metaphors trigger a simulation process, while the subject-verb metaphors trigger an abstraction process in the verb processing stage. Moreover, the subject-verb metaphors elicited a stronger P600/LPC effect by the target verbs than the verb-object metaphors, but there was no difference of the P600/LPC caused by the target objects between the two kinds of metaphors, revealing that the metaphorical meaning of a subject-verb metaphor is integrated in the verb processing stage, while that of a verb-object metaphor is reanalyzed in the object processing stage. These results suggest that a verbal metaphor is processed both by simulation and abstraction, and the metaphorical meaning is integrated immediately with the unfolding of the sentence meaning. The position where the semantic conflict lies in a sentence (verb vs. object) modulates the time course of metaphor sentence comprehension.

Cognitive control of invalid predominant ideas in insight-like problem solving

Predominant ordinary ideas are insufficient for solving insight-like problems; they interfere with subordinate original ideas and can produce a mental impasse. However, how people monitor and control invalid predominant ideas remains largely unknown. In the current study, participants were asked to solve a sequence of several similar practice problems that had the same solution to strengthen a predominant idea; the participants were then presented with an insight-like test problem that could not be solved by the predominant idea. The results showed that if the test problem was similar to the practice problems in which the predominant idea could typically be applied, it elicited greater late sustained potential (LSP) over the whole brain but no conflict-related N2 or N400 components, which suggests that the participants did not experience cognitive conflict and continued to verify the predominant but currently invalid idea. When the test problem differed from the practice problems, the items that participants reported trying to solve elicited greater N2-N400 and LSP over the whole brain, which suggests that the participants experienced cognitive conflict and exerted more reactive control over the invalid predominant idea; in contrast, the items that participants reported thinking about how to solve did not evoke greater conflict-related N2-N400 components and evoked even lower LSP, which likely indicates an ineffective state. These findings demonstrate three kinds of cognitive control toward invalid predominant ideas in situations where they are typically and not typically applied and provide empirical evidence of a mental impasse in insight-like problem-solving behaviors.

Bilingual Processing Mechanisms of Scientific Metaphors and Conventional Metaphors: Evidence via a Contrastive Event-Related Potentials Study

To study the different mechanisms of understanding figurative language in a speaker’s native language (L1) and their second language (L2), this study investigated how scientific metaphors in Chinese (L1) and English (L2) are electrophysiologically processed via event-related potential experimentation. Compared with the metaphors from daily life or in literary works, scientific metaphors tend to involve both a more complicated context structure and a distinct knowledge-inferencing process. During the N400 time window (300–500 ms), English scientific metaphors elicited more negative N400s than Chinese ones at the parietal region. In the late positive component (LPC) time window (550–800 ms), English scientific metaphors elicited less positive LPCs than Chinese ones at the parietal region, and larger late negativities encompassing smaller areas of the brain. The findings might indicate that for late unbalanced bilingual speakers, L2 scientific metaphor comprehension requires more effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route. Altogether, the possible findings are that non-native and non-dominant language processing involves decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms, and decreased sensitivity to the levels of conventionality of metaphoric meanings.

Hemispheric Processing of Chinese Scientific Metaphors: Evidence via Hemifield Presentation

The role of the two hemispheres in processing metaphoric language is controversial. In order to complement current debates, the current divided visual field (DVF) study introduced scientific metaphors as novel metaphors, presenting orientation mapping from the specific and familiar domains to the abstract and unfamiliar domains, to examine hemispheric asymmetry in metaphoric processing. Twenty-four Chinese native speakers from science disciplines took part in the experiment. The participants were presented with four types of Chinese word pairs: scientific metaphors, conventional metaphors, literal word pairs, and unrelated word pairs. The first word in each pair was presented centrally, and the second was presented to the left visual field (the Right Hemisphere) or the right visual field (the Left Hemisphere). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded when participants read the target words and judged whether words in each pair were related. The data demonstrated that both hemispheres were involved at the initial stage of metaphor processing, but the right hemisphere took a more privileged role. The significant activation of the left hemisphere for scientific metaphoric processing supports the fine-coarse coding hypothesis. During right-visual-field presentation, the left hemisphere, responsible for the processing of closely related domains, has to integrate the loosely associated domains of scientific metaphor, which greatly increased cognitive taxes. Moreover, the data of late positive components (LPCs) revealed different hemispheric activation between scientific metaphors and conventional metaphors. Compared with literal pairs, conventional metaphors elicited significantly higher LPCs during right visual field presentation, while the scientific metaphor elicited significantly lower LPCs during left visual field presentation. These results suggest different processing mechanisms between novel metaphors and conventional metaphors and the special role of the right hemisphere in novel metaphoric processing at the later mapping stage.

Reactive control in evaluating appropriately or inappropriately novel ideas: Evidence from electrophysiological measures

Novelty and appropriateness have been considered two necessary criteria to distinguish creative ideas, but little is known about what kind of reactive control people will make when they evaluate appropriately or inappropriately novel ideas. To study this issue, high-density technology was used to record electroencephalography (EEG) signals when participants were evaluating ideas in novel & appropriate, novel & inappropriate, ordinary & appropriate, and ordinary & inappropriate conditions. An analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed that greater conflict detection-related N2 and N400-like components over the anterior scalp appeared in novel conditions than in ordinary conditions, suggesting that people are able to rapidly monitor novel ideas. Afterward, the mean amplitudes of the LPC over the left anterior scalp were greater in novel & appropriate condition than ordinary & appropriate condition, but no difference was found between novel & appropriate and novel & inappropriate conditions, which likely displayed much more reactive control was recruited to handle novel ideas and no additional control was recruited when the novel ideas were inappropriate. In addition, the mean amplitudes of the LPC/LNC over the posterior scalp were greater in novel than ordinary conditions and were also greater in inappropriate than appropriate conditions, which likely reflected the processing difficulties of conceptual understanding. These findings revealed the early rise monitoring, conceptual understanding, and reactive control mechanism underlying the evaluation of novel ideas.

Does Creativity Influence Visual Perception? - An Event-Related Potential Study With Younger and Older Adults

We do not know enough about the cognitive background of creativity despite its significance. Using an active oddball paradigm with unambiguous and ambiguous portrait paintings as the standard stimuli, our aim was to examine whether: creativity in the figural domain influences the perception of visual stimuli; any stages of visual processing; or if healthy aging has an effect on these processes. We investigated event related potentials (ERPs) and applied ERP decoding analyses in four groups: younger less creative; younger creative; older less creative; and older creative adults. The early visual processing did not differ between creativity groups. In the later ERP stages the amplitude for the creative compared with the less creative groups was larger between 300 and 500 ms. The stimuli types were clearly distinguishable: within the 300–500 ms range the amplitude was larger for ambiguous rather than unambiguous paintings, but this difference in the traditional ERP analysis was only observable in the younger, not elderly groups, who also had this difference when using decoding analysis. Our results could not prove that visual creativity influences the early stage of perception, but showed creativity had an effect on stimulus processing in the 300–500 ms range, in indexing differences in top-down control, and having more flexible cognitive control in the younger creative group.

The dynamic monitoring and control mechanism in problem solving: Evidence from theta and alpha oscillations

Although both originality and value are considered necessary criteria to identify creative ideas, little is known about how original and valuable ideas are generated in the human brain. To reveal how people monitor and control ongoing processing in the pursuit of original and valuable ideas, high-density electroencephalography (EEG) was used to record electrophysiological signals when participants were performing chunk decomposition tasks via novel-appropriate, novel-inappropriate, ordinary-appropriate and ordinary-inappropriate pathways. The results showed that approximately 100 ms after the problem was presented, novel pathways showed increased theta synchronization in the frontal sites compared to ordinary pathways. Novel pathways were associated with increased alpha desynchronization over the entire brain scale. These theta and alpha oscillations likely indicated rapid monitoring and effective control of novel processing in thinking. In the latter stages of problem solving, particularly during the 2000-2600-ms intervals, increased theta synchronization with decreased alpha desynchronization was found between novel-inappropriate and novel-appropriate pathways, which likely indicated slow monitoring and less control of inappropriate processing in novel thinking. The findings demonstrated the dynamic monitoring and control mechanism in the pursuit of original and valuable ideas.

Conceptual expansion via novel metaphor processing: An ERP replication and extension study examining individual differences in creativity

The aims of the present ERP study were twofold. First, to determine whether a previous study on creative cognition could be replicated, and second, to extend these findings by examining individual differences in creativity. Conceptual expansion, a capacity that is central to creativity, was induced via the processing of novel metaphors. Brain activity patterns in relation to these were compared to the processing of literal and nonsense phrases. The previous findings were replicated in that the N400, known for its sensitivity to semantic anomalies, indexed the originality of the phrases, while a post-N400 late component (LC), which is linked to semantic integration processes, indexed the appropriateness of the phrases. Moreover, only the LC was significantly sensitive to individual differences in creativity in the processing of these phrases. Differences at the level of semantic integration processes as well as the structure of knowledge organization are thereby implicated in individual differences in creativity.

Enhanced insightfulness and neural activation induced by metaphorical solutions to appropriate mental distress problems

Although the neural correlates of novelty and appropriateness of creative insight during cognitive tasks have been investigated in several studies, they have not been examined during mental distress in a psychotherapeutic setting. This study aimed to reveal the promoting effects of novelty and appropriateness processing on therapeutic insight in a micro-psychotherapeutic setting. We examined the effects of appropriateness (between-subject factor: appropriateness group, 20 participants; inappropriateness group, 21 participants) by manipulating the preceding negative scenarios that either fit or did not fit the subsequent solutions, and those of novelty (within-subject factor) by varying the linguistic expressions for describing solutions (metaphorical, literal, or problem-restatement). Event-related functional magnetic resonance images were collected. We found the following effects: an interactive effect of the two factors on insightfulness and activation in the bilateral hippocampus and amygdala, right superior frontal gyrus, and left superior/middle temporal gyrus; a simple effect of novelty on activation in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, fusiform gyrus, and inferior/middle occipital gyrus; and a simple effect of appropriateness on activation in the left inferior parietal lobule. Our findings indicate that solutions with high novelty and appropriateness generate the highest levels of therapeutic insightfulness as well as the strongest activation in the hippocampus and amygdala, which may be involved in episodic memory encoding.

Towards a neural model of creative evaluation in advertising: an electrophysiological study

Although it is increasingly recognized that evaluation is a key phase for a two-fold creativity model, the neural model is not yet well understood. To this end, we constructed a theoretical model of creative evaluation and supported it with neural evidence through event-related potentials (ERPs) technology during a creative advertising task. Participants were required to evaluate the relationship between target words and advertising that systematically varied in novelty and usefulness. The ERPs results showed that (a) the novelty-usefulness and novelty-only conditions evoked a larger N1-P2 amplitude, reflecting an automatic attentional bias to novelty, and (b) these two novelty conditions elicited a larger N200-500 amplitude, reflecting an effort to process the novel content; (c) the novelty-usefulness and usefulness-only conditions induced a larger LPC amplitude, reflecting that valuable associations were formed through retrieval of relevant memories. These results propose a neural model of creative evaluation in advertising: the N1-P2, N200-500, and LPC should be the key indices to define three sub-processes of novelty perception, conception expansion, and value selection, respectively.

An Electrophysiological Abstractness Effect for Metaphorical Meaning Making

Neuroimaging studies show that metaphors activate sensorimotor areas. These findings were interpreted as metaphors contributing to conceptual thought by mapping concrete, somatosensory information onto abstract ideas. But is sensorimotor information a necessary constituent of figurative meaning? The present study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) in a divided visual field paradigm with healthy adults to explore the role of sensorimotor feature processing in the comprehension of novel metaphors via the electrophysiological concreteness effect. Participants read French, novel adjective-noun expressions that were either metaphorical (“fat sentence”) or literal (“fat hip”). While literal expressions evoked a typical concreteness effect, an enhanced frontal negativity during right hemisphere (RH) as opposed to left hemisphere (LH) presentation, metaphors showed no such sign of sensorimotor feature processing. Relative to literals, they evoked a sustained frontal negativity during LH presentation and similar amplitudes during RH presentation, but both of these effects were the greater the more abstract the metaphors were. It is the first time such an electrophysiological abstractness effect is reported, just the opposite of a concreteness effect. It is particularly noteworthy that ERPs evoked by metaphors were not contingent on figurativeness, novelty, meaningfulness, imageability, emotional valence, or arousal, only on abstractness. When compared with similarly novel literal expressions, metaphors did not evoke a typical N400 and did not activate the RH either. The findings shed new light on the neurocognitive machinery of figurative meaning construction, pervasive in everyday communication. Contrary to embodied cognition, the conceptual system might be organized around abstract representations and not sensorimotor information, even for lush, metaphorical language.

Engineering creativity: Prior experience modulates electrophysiological responses to novel metaphors

Novel metaphorical language use exemplifies human creativity through production and comprehension of meaningful linguistic expressions that may have never been heard before. Available electrophysiological research demonstrates, however, that novel metaphor comprehension is cognitively costly, as it requires integrating information from distantly related concepts. Herein, we investigate if such cognitive cost may be reduced as a factor of prior domain knowledge. To this end, we asked engineering and nonengineering students to read for comprehension literal, novel metaphorical, and anomalous sentences related to engineering or general knowledge, while undergoing EEG recording. Upon reading each sentence, participants were asked to judge whether or not the sentence was original in meaning (novelty judgment) and whether or not it made sense (sensicality judgment). When collapsed across groups, our findings demonstrate a gradual N400 modulation with N400 being maximal in response to anomalous, followed by metaphorical, and literal sentences. Between‐group comparisons revealed a mirror effect on the N400 to novel metaphorical sentences, with attenuated N400 in engineers and enhanced N400 in non‐engineers. Critically, planned comparisons demonstrated reduced N400 amplitudes to engineering novel metaphors in engineers relative to non‐engineers, pointing to an effect of prior knowledge on metaphor processing. This reduction, however, was observed in the absence of a sentence type × knowledge × group interaction. Altogether, our study provides novel evidence suggesting that prior domain knowledge may have a direct impact on creative language comprehension.

This study provides novel evidence that prior knowledge facilitates interpretation of novel metaphorical sentences, an index of linguistic creativity. As such, this study contributes to, and bridges, the fields of figurative language processing and creativity research.

The function of the hippocampus and middle temporal gyrus in forming new associations and concepts during the processing of novelty and usefulness features in creative designs

Creative thought relies on the reorganization of existing knowledge to generate novel and useful concepts. However, how these new concepts are formed, especially through the processing of novelty and usefulness (which are usually regarded as the key properties of creativity), is not clear. Taking familiar and useful (FU) objects/designs as the starting point or fundamental baseline, we modified them into novel and useless (NS) objects/designs or novel and useful (NU) ones (i.e., truly creative ones) to investigate how the features of novelty and usefulness are processed (processing of novelty: NU minus FU; processing of usefulness: NU minus NS). Specifically, we predicted that the creative integration of novelty and usefulness entails not only the formation of new associations, which could be critically mediated by the hippocampus and adjacent medial temporal lobe (MTL) areas, but also the formation of new concepts or categories, which is supported by the middle temporal gyrus (MTG). We found that both the MTL and the MTG were involved in the processing of novelty and usefulness. The MTG showed distinctive patterns of information processing, reflected by strengthened functional connectivity with the hippocampus to construct new concepts and strengthened functional connectivity with the executive control system to break the boundaries of old concepts. Additionally, participants' subjective evaluations of concept distance showed that the distance between the familiar concept (FU) and the successfully constructed concept (NU) was larger than that between the FU and the unsuccessfully constructed concept (NS), and this pattern was found to correspond to the patterns of their neural representations in the MTG. These findings demonstrate the critical mechanism by which new associations and concepts are formed during novelty and usefulness processing in creative design; this mechanism may be critically mediated by the hippocampus-MTG connection.

Default network contributions to episodic and semantic processing during divergent creative thinking: A representational similarity analysis

Cognitive and neuroimaging evidence suggests that episodic and semantic memory-memory for autobiographical events and conceptual knowledge, respectively-support different aspects of creative thinking, with a growing number of studies reporting activation of brain regions within the default network during performance on creative thinking tasks. The present research sought to dissociate neural contributions of these memory processes by inducing episodic or semantic retrieval orientations prior to performance on a divergent thinking task during fMRI. We conducted a representational similarity analysis (RSA) to identify multivoxel patterns of neural activity that were similar across induction (episodic and semantic) and idea generation. At the behavioral level, we found that semantic induction was associated with increased idea originality, assessed via computational estimates of semantic distance between concepts. RSA revealed that multivoxel patterns during semantic induction and subsequent idea generation were more similar (compared to episodic induction) within the left angular gyrus (AG), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and left anterior inferior parietal lobe (IPL). Conversely, activity patterns during episodic induction and subsequent generation were more similar within left parahippocampal gyrus and right anterior IPL. Together, the findings point to dissociable contributions of episodic and semantic memory processes to creative cognition and suggest that distinct regions within the default network support specific memory-related processes during divergent thinking.

Understanding associative vs. abstract pictorial relations: An ERP study

One of the most remarkable human abilities is extracting relations between objects, words or ideas - a process that underlies perception, learning and reasoning. Yet, perhaps due to its complexity, surprisingly little is known about the neural basis of this fundamental ability. Here, we examined EEG waveforms evoked by different types of relations, conveyed by pairs of images. Subjects were presented with the pairs, that were either associatively related, abstractly related or unrelated, and judged if they were related or not. Evidence for a gradual modulation of the amplitude of the N400 and late negativity was found, such that unrelated pairs elicited the most negative amplitude, followed by abstractly-related pairs and lastly associatively-related ones. However, this was confined to first encounter with the pairs, and a different, more dichotomous pattern was observed when the pairs were viewed for the second time. Then, no difference was found between associatively and abstractly related pairs, while both differed from unrelated pairs. Notably, when the pairs were sequentially presented, this pattern was found mostly in right electrodes, while it appeared both in left and right sites during simultaneous presentation of the pairs. This suggests that while two different mechanisms may be involved in generating predictions about an upcoming related/unrelated stimulus, online processing of associative and abstract semantic relations might be mediated by a single mechanism. Our results further support claims that the N400 component indexes multiple cognitive processes that overlap in time, yet not necessarily in neural generators.

Re-Representing Metaphor: Modeling Metaphor Perception Using Dynamically Contextual Distributional Semantics

In this paper, we present a novel context-dependent approach to modeling word meaning, and apply it to the modeling of metaphor. In distributional semantic approaches, words are represented as points in a high dimensional space generated from co-occurrence statistics; the distances between points may then be used to quantifying semantic relationships. Contrary to other approaches which use static, global representations, our approach discovers contextualized representations by dynamically projecting low-dimensional subspaces; in these ad hoc spaces, words can be re-represented in an open-ended assortment of geometrical and conceptual configurations as appropriate for particular contexts. We hypothesize that this context-specific re-representation enables a more effective model of the semantics of metaphor than standard static approaches. We test this hypothesis on a dataset of English word dyads rated for degrees of metaphoricity, meaningfulness, and familiarity by human participants. We demonstrate that our model captures these ratings more effectively than a state-of-the-art static model, and does so via the amount of contextualizing work inherent in the re-representational process.

Use a Spoon as a Spade?: Changes in the Upper and Lower Alpha Bands in Evaluating Alternate Object Use

Previous electrophysiological research on human creative cognition has related creative ideation to increased activity in the alpha band, an effect which mainly reflects increased general attentional demands. Research on alpha unrelated to creativity has revealed different functional roles of the upper (semantic processes) and lower (attentional processes) alpha sub-bands. At the same time, the need to dissect creative thinking into specific cognitive operations, such as, semantic processing, re-representation, or conceptual expansion has become evident. The main aim of the reported study was to test whether increased semantic processing demands linked to creating conceptual re-representations of objects required for evaluating alternate uses modulate activity in the upper and/or lower alpha sub-bands. For this purpose, we performed an alternate use evaluation task (AUeT), in which participants saw word pairs representing common uses, alternate uses, and unrelated word pairs, and evaluated whether a given use was common or uncommon (question 1), and how usable it was (question 2). Such an approach allowed us to examine the time-course of semantic processing involved in evaluating alternate uses. Additionally, the results could be contrasted with event-related potential (ERP) studies on creative language and semantic processing. We assumed that demands related to access and integration of semantic information needed to create a re-representation of objects (alternate uses) would be larger than in the case of common uses, which do not require creating a re-representation. This should be reflected in more activity in the alpha band in response to alternate than common uses, which was observed in the analysis of the upper alpha band over parieto-occipital sites. In the lower alpha band, more activity over the left than right anterior sites was observed for alternate uses, which might reflect increased attentional demands. Additionally, in the ERP analysis, alternate uses evoked larger N400 (400–500 ms) amplitudes than common uses, a pattern that extended to later time windows (500–1,000 ms). Overall, the results indicate increased semantic processing demands in alternate use evaluation, possibly linked to the creation of conceptual re-representations.

Exploring the Experience of Novelty When Viewing Creative Adverts: An ERP Study

The electrophysiological correlates of experiencing novelty in creative advertising were studied in 28 healthy subjects using event-related potentials. Participants viewed images that were difficult to interpret until a description was presented providing either a creative description (CD) featuring an unexpected description of the image based on the original advertisement, or a normal description (ND), which was a literal description of the image (and served as a baseline condition). Participants evaluated the level of creativity of the description. The results showed that the N2 amplitude was higher for CDs than for NDs across middle and right scalp regions between 240 and 270 ms, most likely reflecting conflict detection. Moreover, CDs demonstrated greater N400 than NDs in a time window between 380 and 500 ms, it is argued that this reflects semantic integration. The present study investigates the electrophysiological correlates of experiencing novelty in advertising with ecologically valid stimuli. This substantially extends the findings of earlier laboratory studies with more artificial stimuli.

Left centro-parieto-temporal response to tool-gesture incongruity: an ERP study

BACKGROUND

Action semantics have been investigated in relation to context violation but remain less examined in relation to the meaning of gestures. In the present study, we examined tool-gesture incongruity by event-related potentials (ERPs) and hypothesized that the component N400, a neural index which has been widely used in both linguistic and action semantic congruence, is significant for conditions of incongruence.

METHODS

Twenty participants performed a tool-gesture judgment task, in which they were asked to judge whether the tool-gesture pairs were correct or incorrect, for the purpose of conveying functional expression of the tools. Online electroencephalograms and behavioral performances (the accuracy rate and reaction time) were recorded.

RESULTS

The ERP analysis showed a left centro-parieto-temporal N300 effect (220-360 ms) for the correct condition. However, the expected N400 (400-550 ms) could not be differentiated between correct/incorrect conditions. After 700 ms, a prominent late negative complex for the correct condition was also found in the left centro-parieto-temporal area.

CONCLUSIONS

The neurophysiological findings indicated that the left centro-parieto-temporal area is the predominant region contributing to neural processing for tool-gesture incongruity in right-handers. The temporal dynamics of tool-gesture incongruity are: (1) firstly enhanced for recognizable tool-gesture using patterns, (2) and require a secondary reanalysis for further examination of the highly complicated visual structures of gestures and tools. The evidence from the tool-gesture incongruity indicated altered brain activities attributable to the N400 in relation to lexical and action semantics. The online interaction between gesture and tool processing provided minimal context violation or anticipation effect, which may explain the missing N400.

On understanding creative language: The late positive complex and novel metaphor comprehension

Novel metaphoric sentences have repeatedly evoked larger N400 amplitudes than literal sentences, while investigations of the late positive complex (LPC) have brought inconsistent results, with reports of both increased and reduced amplitudes. In two experiments, we examined novel metaphor comprehension in Polish, using the same set of literal, novel metaphoric, and anomalous sentences. The first aim of the study was to test whether novel metaphors would evoke larger or smaller late positivity complex (LPC) amplitudes compared to literal and anomalous sentences. Some earlier studies have shown that whether increased LPC amplitudes are observed or not may be related to the task participants are asked to perform, with explicit acceptability judgments being more likely to evoke the LPC effect. The second aim of the study was, thus, to test whether the observed LPC pattern would be the same across two tasks, the semantic decision task (Experiment 1) and the reading task (Experiment 2). Our results replicated the N400 effect observed in earlier studies on metaphor in both experiments. Most importantly, a reduction in late positivity to novel metaphors relative to anomalous sentences was found in both experiments. Additionally, this difference was broadly distributed over parietal sites in Experiment 1, and clearly left-lateralized in Experiment 2, which might imply differences in the involvement of recollection and semantic processes. Overall, these results seem to indicate that both conventionality and task demands modulate the LPC pattern.

To electrify bilingualism: Electrophysiological insights into bilingual metaphor comprehension

Though metaphoric language comprehension has previously been investigated with event-related potentials, little attention has been devoted to extending this research from the monolingual to the bilingual context. In the current study, late proficient unbalanced Polish (L1)–English (L2) bilinguals performed a semantic decision task to novel metaphoric, conventional metaphoric, literal, and anomalous word pairs presented in L1 and L2. The results showed more pronounced P200 amplitudes to L2 than L1, which can be accounted for by differences in the subjective frequency of the native and non-native lexical items. Within the early N400 time window (300–400 ms), L2 word dyads evoked delayed and attenuated amplitudes relative to L1 word pairs, possibly indicating extended lexical search during foreign language processing, and weaker semantic interconnectivity for L2 compared to L1 words within the memory system. The effect of utterance type was observed within the late N400 time window (400–500 ms), with smallest amplitudes evoked by literal, followed by conventional metaphoric, novel metaphoric, and anomalous word dyads. Such findings are interpreted as reflecting more resource intensive cognitive mechanisms governing novel compared to conventional metaphor comprehension in both the native and non-native language. Within the late positivity time window (500–800 ms), Polish novel metaphors evoked reduced amplitudes relative to literal utterances. In English, on the other hand, this effect was observed for both novel and conventional metaphoric word dyads. This finding might indicate continued effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route during novel metaphor comprehension in L1, and during novel and conventional metaphor comprehension in L2. Altogether, the present results point to decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms engaged in non-native and non-dominant language processing, and suggest a decreased sensitivity to the levels of conventionality of metaphoric meanings in late proficient unbalanced bilingual speakers.

Creative thinking as orchestrated by semantic processing vs. cognitive control brain networks

Creativity is primarily investigated within the neuroscientific perspective as a unitary construct. While such an approach is beneficial when trying to infer the general picture regarding creativity and brain function, it is insufficient if the objective is to uncover the information processing brain mechanisms by which creativity occurs. As creative thinking emerges through the dynamic interplay between several cognitive processes, assessing the neural correlates of these operations would enable the development and characterization of an information processing framework from which to better understand this complex ability. This article focuses on two aspects of creative cognition that are central to generating original ideas. "Conceptual expansion" refers to the ability to widen one's conceptual structures to include unusual or novel associations, while "overcoming knowledge constraints" refers to our ability to override the constraining influence imposed by salient or pertinent knowledge when trying to be creative. Neuroimaging and neuropsychological evidence is presented to illustrate how semantic processing and cognitive control networks in the brain differentially modulate these critical facets of creative cognition.

The promises and perils of the neuroscience of creativity

Our ability to think creatively is one of the factors that generates excitement in our lives as it introduces novelty and opens up new possibilities to our awareness which in turn lead to developments in a variety of fields from science and technology to art and culture. While research on the influence of biologically-based variables on creativity has a long history, the advent of modern techniques for investigating brain structure and function in the past two decades have resulted in an exponential increase in the number of neuroscientific studies that have explored creativity. The field of creative neurocognition is a rapidly growing area of research that can appear chaotic and inaccessible because of the heterogeneity associated with the creativity construct and the many approaches through which it can be examined. There are also significant methodological and conceptual problems that are specific to the neuroscientific study of creativity that pose considerable limitations on our capacity to make true advances in understanding the brain basis of creativity. This article explores three key issues that need to be addressed so that barriers in the way of relevant progress being made within the field can be avoided. Are creativity neuroimaging paradigms optimal enough?What makes creative cognition different from normative cognition?Do we need to distinguish between types of creativity?