Creative aging: functional brain networks associated with divergent thinking in older and younger adults

A shared novelty-seeking basis for creativity and curiosity: Response to the commentators

In our target article, we proposed that curiosity and creativity are both manifestations of the same novelty-seeking process. We received 29 commentaries from diverse disciplines that add insights to our initial proposal. These commentaries ultimately expanded and supplemented our model. Here we draw attention to five central practical and theoretical issues that were raised by the commentators: (1) The complex construct of novelty and associated concepts; (2) the underlying subsystems and possible mechanisms; (3) the different pathways and subtypes of curiosity and creativity; (4) creativity and curiosity "in the wild"; (5) the possible link(s) between creativity and curiosity.

Case report: when art is faced with brain surgery: acute change in creative style in a painter after glioma resection

Background

Strong interactions between art and health are well-known. While advances in brain surgery resulted in an improved preservation of sensorimotor, visuospatial, language and cognitive functions, creative abilities received less attention. However, creativity may represent a critical issue to resume an optimal quality of life, especially in artists. Here, a unique case of sudden change in creative style in a painter who underwent glioma resection is described. This prompts to explore further creative thinking and its clinical implications in routine practice.

Methods

A 36-year-old right-handed woman experienced inaugural seizures, allowing the discovery of a right frontal lesion. The patient was a professional painter and did not complain about any decline in her creativity. The preoperative neurological examination was normal.

Results

Surgery was achieved with a maximal tumor resection through a frontal lobectomy. A WHO grade II oligodendroglioma was diagnosed. A regular surveillance was performed without adjuvant oncological treatment. The patient did not exhibit postoperative functional deterioration and she returned to normal activities including painting during 15 years. Remarkably, even though her creative activity was judged by the patient herself to be rich and satisfying, her style drastically changed from surrealism and mysticism to cubism whereas she was not able to explain why.

Conclusion

This is the first report of acute modification of the painting style following frontal lobectomy for a low-grade glioma, supporting that brain resective surgery may impact creativity. While neglected for many decades, this complex human ability should be evaluated more regularly in neurosurgical practice, particularly in artists.

Age differences in the neural processing of semantics, within and beyond the core semantic network

Aging is associated with functional activation changes in domain-specific regions and large-scale brain networks. This preregistered Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated these effects within the domain of semantic cognition. Participants completed 1 nonsemantic and 2 semantic tasks. We found no age differences in semantic activation in core semantic regions. However, the right inferior frontal gyrus showed difficulty-related increases in both age groups. This suggests that age-related upregulation of this area may be a compensatory response to increased processing demands. At a network level, older people showed more engagement in the default mode network and less in the executive multiple-demand network, aligning with older people's greater knowledge reserves and executive declines. In contrast, activation was age-invariant in semantic control regions. Finally, older adults showed reduced demand-related modulation of multiple-demand network activation in the nonsemantic task but not the semantic tasks. These findings provide a new perspective on the neural basis of semantic cognition in aging, suggesting that preserved function in specialized semantic networks may help to maintain semantic cognition in later life.

The Role of Cognition in Divergent Thinking: Implications for Successful Aging

Promoting active and successful aging has become crucial to improve quality of life in later adulthood and reduce the impact of cognitive decline. Increasing evidence suggested that the ability to think creatively (e.g., via divergent thinking), similar to cognitive reserve, could represent a beneficial factor against the negative effects of aging. However, there is still little evidence investigating the relationships between divergent thinking, cognitive functions, and cognitive reserve in late adulthood. The present study explored these relationships in a sample of 98 individuals ranging from 61 to 88 years old (mean age: 72.44 ± 6.35). Results showed that visual, but not verbal, divergent thinking was affected by aging. Interestingly, visual divergent thinking performance was predicted by both the cognitive component of crystallized intelligence and cognitive reserve. Only the crystallized component of intelligence was found to mediate the aging effect on visual divergent thinking performance. These results suggest that in later adulthood a potential shift strategy to prior knowledge and semantic components over executive and control components of cognition could underlie a preserved ability to think divergently and, plausibly, creatively. Limitations of the study and implications for successful aging are discussed.

The SPECTRA Study: Validating a New Memory Training Program based on the Episodic Specificity Induction to Promote Transfer in Older Adults

Some complex cognitive activities impacted by aging (future thinking, problem-solving, creative thinking) have been shown to rely on episodic retrieval, suggesting that cognitive interventions aiming to improve retrieval have the potential to induce transfer effects to these activities. Prior studies have shown that a brief one-session technique called Episodic Specificity Induction (ESI) can transiently improve episodic retrieval and induce transfer effects to complex tasks that rely on episodic retrieval in older adults. In the present proof-of-concept study, we assessed whether a training program consisting of repeated practice of the ESI technique can improve episodic retrieval and transfer to complex tasks. Fifteen healthy older adults completed a six-session intervention where they received repeated ESI practice. Before and after the intervention, nearest transfer effects were assessed using free recall, near transfer effects using recognition and associative recognition, and far-transfer effects using mean-ends problem-solving and divergent creative thinking. Before the intervention, typical ESI effects were observed (better performance after an ESI than after a control task), indicating that the ESI operated as expected in our sample. When examining the intervention effects, performance was increased after the intervention on free recall and recognition (nearest- and near-transfer) as well as problem-solving and divergent creative thinking (far transfer). These results indicate that an intervention relying on the ESI technique can produce both near and far transfer. These findings support the use of the ESI in the design of interventions that could improve retrieval and have a broad impact on a range of complex tasks.

Differential effects of ageing on the neural processing of speech and singing production

Background

Understanding healthy brain ageing has become vital as populations are ageing rapidly and age-related brain diseases are becoming more common. In normal brain ageing, speech processing undergoes functional reorganisation involving reductions of hemispheric asymmetry and overactivation in the prefrontal regions. However, little is known about how these changes generalise to other vocal production, such as singing, and how they are affected by associated cognitive demands.

Methods

The present cross-sectional fMRI study systematically maps the neural correlates of vocal production across adulthood (N=100, age 21-88 years) using a balanced 2x3 design where tasks varied in modality (speech: proverbs / singing: song phrases) and cognitive demand (repetition / completion from memory / improvisation).

Results

In speech production, ageing was associated with decreased left pre- and postcentral activation across tasks and increased bilateral angular and right inferior temporal and fusiform activation in the improvisation task. In singing production, ageing was associated with increased activation in medial and bilateral prefrontal and parietal regions in the completion task, whereas other tasks showed no ageing effects. Direct comparisons between the modalities showed larger age-related activation changes in speech than singing across tasks, including a larger left-to-right shift in lateral prefrontal regions in the improvisation task.

Conclusion

The present results suggest that the brains' singing network undergoes differential functional reorganisation in normal ageing compared to the speech network, particularly during a task with high executive demand. These findings are relevant for understanding the effects of ageing on vocal production as well as how singing can support communication in healthy ageing and neurological rehabilitation.

Creative thinking in Tourette's syndrome: A comparative study of patients and healthy controls

INTRODUCTION

Tourette's syndrome is a neurological disorder characterized by tics, that may interfere with patients' everyday life. Research suggested that creative thinking (namely, divergent and convergent thinking) could help patients cope with their symptoms, and therefore it can be a resource in non-pharmacological interventions. The present study aimed at investigating (i) possible differences in creative thinking between Tourette's syndrome patients and healthy controls and (ii) whether creative thinking can support patients in coping with their symptomatology.

METHODS

A group of 25 Tourette's syndrome patients and 25 matched healthy controls underwent an assessment of creative thinking, fluid intelligence, and depressive symptoms. Creative thinking was compared between patients and healthy controls after controlling for fluid intelligence and depressive symptoms. Moreover, the moderating role of divergent and convergent thinking on the subjective impact of tics was tested in a group of 30 patients.

RESULTS

Tourette's syndrome patients outperformed healthy controls in convergent thinking. Moreover, divergent thinking was found as a significant moderator of the relationship between tics severity and the subjective impact in Tourette's syndrome patients.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings highlighted the specific impact of convergent and divergent thinking on Tourette's syndrome patients. Considering the supportive role of creative thinking in Tourette's syndrome, our results confirm that higher levels of divergent thinking may reduce the tic-related discomfort. These findings suggest the potential positive implications of creative thinking in non-pharmacological interventions for Tourette's syndrome.

The effects of typical ageing on cognitive control: recent advances and future directions

Cognitive control is one of the most fundamental aspects of human life. Its ageing is an important contemporary research area due to the needs of the growing ageing population, such as prolonged independence and quality of life. Traditional ageing research argued for a global decline in cognitive control with age, typically characterised by slowing processing speed and driven by changes in the frontal cortex. However, recent advances questioned this perspective by demonstrating high heterogeneity in the ageing data, domain-specific declines, activity changes in resting state networks, and increased functional connectivity. Moreover, improvements in neuroimaging techniques have enabled researchers to develop compensatory models of neural reorganisation that helps negate the effects of neural losses and promote cognitive control. In this article on typical ageing, we review recent behavioural and neural findings related to the decline in cognitive control among older adults. We begin by reviewing traditional perspectives and continue with how recent work challenged those perspectives. In the discussion section, we propose key areas of focus for future research in the field.

Evaluating the effects of episodic and semantic memory induction procedures on divergent thinking in younger and older adults

Evidence suggesting that episodic specificity induction improves divergent thinking performance in younger and older adults has been taken as indicative of the role of declarative memory processes in creativity. A series of studies were carried out to verify the specificity of such findings by investigating the effects of several novel episodic and semantic memory induction procedures on a widely employed measure of divergent creative thinking (the Alternate Uses Task), in comparison to a control induction and a no-induction baseline in both younger and older adults. There was no clear evidence for a specific role played by the induction of episodic or semantic memory processes in facilitating creative thinking across the three experiments, and the effects of the induction procedures (episodic, semantic and control) on divergent thinking were not comparable across age groups. On the other hand, higher levels of creativity were generally associated with older adults (60-80 years). In Experiments 2 and 3, older adults generated a greater number of responses (fluency), more unique responses (average originality, peak originality, creativity ratings) and more varied responses (flexibility) than younger adults (18-30 years). The findings are discussed in relation to the specificity of declarative memory operations and their impact on creative thinking, especially within the context of healthy ageing.

Changes of creative ability and underlying brain network connectivity throughout the lifespan

Creativity, or divergent thinking, is essential to and supported by cognitive functions necessary for everyday tasks. The current study investigates divergent thinking and its neural mechanisms from adolescence to late adulthood. To do this, 180 healthy participants completed a creativity task called the egg task including 86 adolescents (mean age (SD) = 13.62 (1.98)), 52 young adults (24.92 (3.60), and 42 older adults (62.84 (7.02)). Additionally, a subsample of 111 participants completed a resting-state fMRI scan. After investigating the impact of age on different divergent thinking metrics, we investigated the impact of age on the association between divergent thinking and resting-state functional connectivity within and between major resting-state brain networks associated with creative thinking: the DMN, ECN, and SN. Adolescents tended to be less creative than both young and older adults in divergent thinking scores related to expansion creativity, and not in persistent creativity, while young and older adults performed relatively similar. We found that adolescents' functional integrity of the executive control network (ECN) was positively associated with expansion creativity, which was significantly different from the negative association in both the young and older adults. These results suggest that creative performance and supporting brain networks change throughout the lifespan.

Age-related reorganization of functional network architecture in semantic cognition

Cognitive aging is associated with widespread neural reorganization processes in the human brain. However, the behavioral impact of such reorganization is not well understood. The current neuroimaging study investigated age differences in the functional network architecture during semantic word retrieval in young and older adults. Combining task-based functional connectivity, graph theory and cognitive measures of fluid and crystallized intelligence, our findings show age-accompanied large-scale network reorganization even when older adults have intact word retrieval abilities. In particular, functional networks of older adults were characterized by reduced decoupling between systems, reduced segregation and efficiency, and a larger number of hub regions relative to young adults. Exploring the predictive utility of these age-related changes in network topology revealed high, albeit less efficient, performance for older adults whose brain graphs showed stronger dedifferentiation and reduced distinctiveness. Our results extend theoretical accounts on neurocognitive aging by revealing the compensational potential of the commonly reported pattern of network dedifferentiation when older adults can rely on their prior knowledge for successful task processing. However, we also demonstrate the limitations of such compensatory reorganization and show that a youth-like network architecture in terms of balanced integration and segregation is associated with more economical processing.

Altered Brain Connectivity Patterns of Individual Differences in Insightful Problem Solving

Insightful problem solving (IPS) attracts widespread attention in creative thinking domains. However, the neural underpinnings of individual differences in IPS are still unclear. The purpose of this research was to investigate inherent full-brain connectivity patterns at voxel-level in IPS. Sixty-two healthy participants were enrolled in the study. We used a voxelwise full-brain network measurement, degree centrality (DC), to depict the characteristics of cerebral network involved in individual differences in IPS. For each participant, we employed a chunk decomposition paradigm, using Mandarin characters as stimuli, to estimate the individual differences in IPS. Results showed that DC in the inferior frontal gyrus, and the middle frontal gyrus/precentral gyrus positively correlated with IPS, while the anterior cingulate cortex, and the brainstern/cerebellum/thalamus exhibited negative correlations with IPS. Using each cluster above as a seed, we performed seed-based functional connectivity analysis further. Results showed that IPS was mainly involved in the default mode network, containing the key regions of precuneus and medial prefrontal cortex. All in all, this research may shed new lights on understanding the neural underpinnings of individual differences in IPS.

From exploration to exploitation: a shifting mental mode in late life development

Changes in cognition, affect, and brain function combine to promote a shift in the nature of mentation in older adulthood, favoring exploitation of prior knowledge over exploratory search as the starting point for thought and action. Age-related exploitation biases result from the accumulation of prior knowledge, reduced cognitive control, and a shift toward affective goals. These are accompanied by changes in cortical networks, as well as attention and reward circuits. By incorporating these factors into a unified account, the exploration-to-exploitation shift offers an integrative model of cognitive, affective, and brain aging. Here, we review evidence for this model, identify determinants and consequences, and survey the challenges and opportunities posed by an exploitation-biased mental mode in later life.

Brain Dynamics Underlying Cognitive Flexibility Across the Lifespan

The neural mechanisms contributing to flexible cognition and behavior and how they change with development and aging are incompletely understood. The current study explored intrinsic brain dynamics across the lifespan using resting-state fMRI data (n = 601, 6-85 years) and examined the interactions between age and brain dynamics among three neurocognitive networks (midcingulo-insular network, M-CIN; medial frontoparietal network, M-FPN; and lateral frontoparietal network, L-FPN) in relation to behavioral measures of cognitive flexibility. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed brain dynamics among a brain state characterized by co-activation of the L-FPN and M-FPN, and brain state transitions, moderated the relationship between quadratic effects of age and cognitive flexibility as measured by scores on the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) test. Furthermore, simple slope analyses of significant interactions revealed children and older adults were more likely to exhibit brain dynamic patterns associated with poorer cognitive flexibility compared with younger adults. Our findings link changes in cognitive flexibility observed with age with the underlying brain dynamics supporting these changes. Preventative and intervention measures should prioritize targeting these networks with cognitive flexibility training to promote optimal outcomes across the lifespan.

Visual art therapy and cognition: Effects on people with mild cognitive impairment and low education level

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of visual art therapy (VAT) on cognition, psychological and functional ability of people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and low education.

METHOD

A single-blinded randomized controlled trial was conducted among 127 older adults with MCI, mean age 73.6 years and level of education in years, (median (range)) = 0 (0 - 9). The intervention group received 12 VAT sessions over six weeks. The control group received six health education sessions. The outcomes measures at baseline, immediately after intervention, at three-months and six-month follow up included global cognitive functions, depression, mental wellbeing and instrumental activities of daily living functions.

RESULTS

The intervention group demonstrated greater improvement than the control group in global cognition (β =2.56, (95% CI =1.16, 3.97), p< .001, standardized mean difference (SMD) = 0.75), and depression (β =-2.01, (95% CI =-3.09, -0.93), p< .001, SMD = -0.93) immediately post intervention. The effects on cognitive functions were sustained at three and six-months follow ups. The differential effect of VAT on mental wellbeing and functional ability compared to health education were undetectable.

DISCUSSION

Visual art therapy can improve cognitive functions and mood status of older adults with MCI who have no or low education.

Functional Realignment of Frontoparietal Subnetworks during Divergent Creative Thinking

Creative cognition has been consistently associated with functional connectivity between frontoparietal control and default networks. However, recent research identified distinct connectivity dynamics for subnetworks within the larger frontoparietal system-one subnetwork (FPCNa) shows positive coupling with the default network and another subnetwork (FPCNb) shows negative default coupling-raising questions about how these networks interact during creative cognition. Here we examine frontoparietal subnetwork functional connectivity in a large sample of participants (n = 171) who completed a divergent creative thinking task and a resting-state scan during fMRI. We replicated recent findings on functional connectivity of frontoparietal subnetworks at rest: FPCNa positively correlated with the default network and FPCNb negatively correlated with the default network. Critically, we found that divergent thinking evoked functional connectivity between both frontoparietal subnetworks and the default network, but in different ways. Using community detection, we found that FPCNa regions showed greater coassignment to a default network community. However, FPCNb showed overall stronger functional connectivity with the default network-reflecting a reversal of negative connectivity at rest-and the strength of FPCNb-default network connectivity correlated with individual creative ability. These findings provide novel evidence of a behavioral benefit to the cooperation of typically anticorrelated brain networks.

INTELLIGENCE LEVEL MIGHT BE PREDICTED BY THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EEG SIGNALS AT SPECIFIC FREQUENCIES AND BRAIN REGIONS

The total energy the brain consumed and the intensities of information flows across different brain regions in an intellectual activity may help to explain an individual’s intelligence level. To verify this assumption, 43 students aged 18–25 were recruited as the research subjects. Their intelligence quotients (IQ) were scored by using Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), while their electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded simultaneously by using Neuroscan system. The total energy and distribution patterns of EEG signals were acquired in Curry 8.0. The intensities of information flow across different brain regions were measured by Phase Slope Index (PSI). 20 channels and 190 channel combinations were selected for data analysis. The results show that the IQ score negatively correlates to the EEG energy and positively correlates to the intensities of information flows at specific frequency bands in specific channel pairs, especially in some long distance (18–24[Formula: see text]cm) channel pairs.

Naming unrelated words predicts creativity

Many traditional measures of creativity require time-intensive and subjective scoring procedures. Their scores are relative to the specific sample, which makes multicultural or international assessments difficult. Our results show that a shorter and simpler task with automatic and objective scoring may be at least as reliable at measuring verbal creativity. This finding enables assessments across larger and more diverse samples with less bias.

Several theories posit that creative people are able to generate more divergent ideas. If this is correct, simply naming unrelated words and then measuring the semantic distance between them could serve as an objective measure of divergent thinking. To test this hypothesis, we asked 8,914 participants to name 10 words that are as different from each other as possible. A computational algorithm then estimated the average semantic distance between the words; related words (e.g., cat and dog) have shorter distances than unrelated ones (e.g., cat and thimble). We predicted that people producing greater semantic distances would also score higher on traditional creativity measures. In Study 1, we found moderate to strong correlations between semantic distance and two widely used creativity measures (the Alternative Uses Task and the Bridge-the-Associative-Gap Task). In Study 2, with participants from 98 countries, semantic distances varied only slightly by basic demographic variables. There was also a positive correlation between semantic distance and performance on a range of problems known to predict creativity. Overall, semantic distance correlated at least as strongly with established creativity measures as those measures did with each other. Naming unrelated words in what we call the Divergent Association Task can thus serve as a brief, reliable, and objective measure of divergent thinking.

Automating creativity assessment with SemDis: An open platform for computing semantic distance

Creativity research requires assessing the quality of ideas and products. In practice, conducting creativity research often involves asking several human raters to judge participants' responses to creativity tasks, such as judging the novelty of ideas from the alternate uses task (AUT). Although such subjective scoring methods have proved useful, they have two inherent limitations-labor cost (raters typically code thousands of responses) and subjectivity (raters vary on their perceptions and preferences)-raising classic psychometric threats to reliability and validity. We sought to address the limitations of subjective scoring by capitalizing on recent developments in automated scoring of verbal creativity via semantic distance, a computational method that uses natural language processing to quantify the semantic relatedness of texts. In five studies, we compare the top performing semantic models (e.g., GloVe, continuous bag of words) previously shown to have the highest correspondence to human relatedness judgements. We assessed these semantic models in relation to human creativity ratings from a canonical verbal creativity task (AUT; Studies 1-3) and novelty/creativity ratings from two word association tasks (Studies 4-5). We find that a latent semantic distance factor-comprised of the common variance from five semantic models-reliably and strongly predicts human creativity and novelty ratings across a range of creativity tasks. We also replicate an established experimental effect in the creativity literature (i.e., the serial order effect) and show that semantic distance correlates with other creativity measures, demonstrating convergent validity. We provide an open platform to efficiently compute semantic distance, including tutorials and documentation ( https://osf.io/gz4fc/ ).

Healthy Aging Alters the Functional Connectivity of Creative Cognition in the Default Mode Network and Cerebellar Network

Creativity is a higher-order neurocognitive process that produces unusual and unique thoughts. Behavioral and neuroimaging studies of younger adults have revealed that creative performance is the product of dynamic and spontaneous processes involving multiple cognitive functions and interactions between large-scale brain networks, including the default mode network (DMN), fronto-parietal executive control network (ECN), and salience network (SN). In this resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) study, group independent component analysis (group-ICA) and resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) measures were applied to examine whether and how various functional connected networks of the creative brain, particularly the default-executive and cerebro-cerebellar networks, are altered with advancing age. The group-ICA approach identified 11 major brain networks across age groups that reflected age-invariant resting-state networks. Compared with older adults, younger adults exhibited more specific and widespread dorsal network and sensorimotor network connectivity within and between the DMN, fronto-parietal ECN, and visual, auditory, and cerebellar networks associated with creativity. This outcome suggests age-specific changes in the functional connected network, particularly in the default-executive and cerebro-cerebellar networks. Our connectivity data further elucidate the critical roles of the cerebellum and cerebro-cerebellar connectivity in creativity in older adults. Furthermore, our findings provide evidence supporting the default-executive coupling hypothesis of aging and novel insights into the interactions of cerebro-cerebellar networks with creative cognition in older adults, which suggest alterations in the cognitive processes of the creative aging brain.

Creative Connections: Computational Semantic Distance Captures Individual Creativity and Resting-State Functional Connectivity

Recent studies of creative cognition have revealed interactions between functional brain networks involved in the generation of novel ideas; however, the neural basis of creativity is highly complex and presents a great challenge in the field of cognitive neuroscience, partly because of ambiguity around how to assess creativity. We applied a novel computational method of verbal creativity assessment-semantic distance-and performed weighted degree functional connectivity analyses to explore how individual differences in assembly of resting-state networks are associated with this objective creativity assessment. To measure creative performance, a sample of healthy adults (n = 175) completed a battery of divergent thinking (DT) tasks, in which they were asked to think of unusual uses for everyday objects. Computational semantic models were applied to calculate the semantic distance between objects and responses to obtain an objective measure of DT performance. All participants underwent resting-state imaging, from which we computed voxel-wise connectivity matrices between all gray matter voxels. A linear regression analysis was applied between DT and weighted degree of the connectivity matrices. Our analysis revealed a significant connectivity decrease in the visual-temporal and parietal regions, in relation to increased levels of DT. Link-level analyses showed higher local connectivity within visual regions was associated with lower DT, whereas projections from the precuneus to the right inferior occipital and temporal cortex were positively associated with DT. Our results demonstrate differential patterns of resting-state connectivity associated with individual creative thinking ability, extending past work using a new application to automatically assess creativity via semantic distance.

A meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of divergent thinking using activation likelihood estimation

There are conflicting findings regarding brain regions and networks underpinning creativity, with divergent thinking tasks commonly used to study this. A handful of meta-analyses have attempted to synthesise findings on neural mechanisms of divergent thinking. With the rapid proliferation of research and recent developments in fMRI meta-analysis approaches, it is timely to reassess the regions activated during divergent thinking creativity tasks. Of particular interest is examining the evidence regarding large-scale brain networks proposed to be key in divergent thinking and extending this work to consider the role of the semantic control network. Studies utilising fMRI with healthy participants completing divergent thinking tasks were systematically identified, with 20 studies meeting the criteria. Activation Likelihood Estimation was then used to integrate the neuroimaging results across studies. This revealed four clusters: the left inferior parietal lobe; the left inferior frontal and precentral gyrus; the superior and medial frontal gyrus and the right cerebellum. These regions are key in the semantic network, important for flexible retrieval of stored knowledge, highlighting the role of this network in divergent thinking.

Functional Connectivity of Successful Picture-Naming: Age-Specific Organization and the Effect of Engaging in Stimulating Activities

Aging is a lifelong process that starts at birth. Throughout the course of their life, individuals are exposed to various levels of stimulating activities. A higher level of engagement in such activities is suspected to protect against the normal course of cognitive aging or the cognitive manifestations of age-related brain diseases. However, the exact mechanism underlying such protective action remains unclear. The concept of the neurocognitive reserve was introduced to refer to the hypothesis that engagement in stimulating activities shapes brain structure and function, thus indirectly allowing for better preserved cognitive abilities. Although it is known that word production is among the best-preserved cognitive abilities in aging, the underlying neurofunctional mechanisms that allow this relative preservation are still unknown, and it is still unclear how engagement in stimulating activities affects these processes. The objective of this study is to describe the brain functional connectivity patterns associated with picture-naming abilities in younger and older adults with varying levels of engagement in stimulating activities, as a proxy for neurocognitive reserve. A mediation analysis was applied to determine whether the association between reserve proxies and naming accuracy is dependent on task FC. Results show that naming accuracy depends on the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) functional decoupling in both younger and older adults but through different pathways. While high-performing older adults rely on the asynchronization of this area from motor speech regions’ activity, the best-performing younger adults rely on the functional decoupling with language-related regions. Mediation analysis reveals that the PCC decoupling mediates the relationship between the level of engagement in stimulating activities and naming accuracy in younger adults, but not in older adults. These findings suggest that reserve-related mechanisms may be more critical for naming in early adult life, while older adults’ neurofunctional organization may benefit more from a lifetime of acquired knowledge.

High Phase Synchronization in Alpha Band Activity in Older Subjects With High Creativity

Despite growing evidence that high creativity leads to mental well-being in older individuals, the neurophysiological bases of creativity remain elusive. Creativity reportedly involves multiple brain areas and their functional interconnections. In particular, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is used to investigate the role of patterns of functional connectivity between the default network and other networks in creative activity. These interactions among networks play the role of integrating various neural processes to support creative activity and involve attention, cognitive control, and memory. The electroencephalogram (EEG) enables researchers to capture a pattern of band-specific functional connectivity, as well as moment-to-moment dynamics of brain activity; this can be accomplished even in the resting-state by exploiting the excellent temporal resolution of the EEG. Furthermore, the recent advent of functional connectivity analysis in EEG studies has focused on the phase-difference variable because of its fine spatio-temporal resolution. Therefore, we hypothesized that the combining method of EEG signals having high-temporal resolution and the phase synchronization analysis having high-spatio-temporal resolutions brings a new insight of functional connectivity regarding high creative activity of older participants. In this study, we examined the resting-state EEG signal in 20 healthy older participants and estimated functional connectivities using the phase lag index (PLI), which evaluates the phase synchronization of EEG signals. Individual creativity was assessed using the S-A creativity test in a separate session before the EEG recording. In the analysis of associations of EEG measures with the S-A test scores, the covariate effect of the intelligence quotient was evaluated. As a result, higher individual S-A scores were significantly associated with higher node degrees, defined as the average PLI of a node (electrode) across all links with the remaining nodes, across all nodes at the alpha band. A conventional power spectrum analysis revealed no significant association with S-A scores in any frequency band. Older participants with high creativity exhibited high functional connectivity even in the resting-state, irrespective of intelligence quotient, which supports the theory that creativity entails widespread brain connectivity. Thus, PLIs derived from EEG data may provide new insights into the relationship between functional connectivity and creativity in healthy older people.

Physical activity and creativity of children and youths

Background

Childhood is an important period for developing maturity in thinking. Accumulating evidence shows the association between physical activity and cognitive function. Although both the intelligence quotient and emotional quotient have been reported to be associated with physical activity, there is a limited amount of published research regarding the association between physical activity and cognitive function in children and youths. With respect to creativity, an important skill for the twenty-first century, little evidence on the creative quotient promotion in childhood is available. The present study, therefore, is designed to explore the correlation between physical activity and creativity.

Methods

The participants included 1447 students with different age groups in 34 schools from Southern Thailand. Age groups were categorized according to Thailand’s 2016 Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, where 521 students were aged 6–9 years, 487 students were aged 10–13 years, and 439 students were aged 14–17 years. Creativity was measured through the use of the Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP). Active play, time with family and peers, and sedentary behavior were monitored by the Thailand Physical Activity Children Survey-the Student Questionnaire (TPACS-SQ).

Results

The correlation between the TCT-DP score representing creativity and active play was noticed in adolescents (r = 0.148, p = 0.001), but not found in participants aged 6–13 years. Active play was associated with time with family and peers in all age groups (r = 0.485, p <  0.001).

Conclusions

The present data supports the idea that optimal physical activity is required during childhood for developing thinking process. Promotion of active play with family and peers may facilitate creativity skills.

Love is a physiological motivation (like hunger, thirst, sleep or sex)

The multitude of terms associated with love has given rise to a false perception of love. In this paper, only maternal and romantic love are considered. Love is usually regarded as a feeling, motivation, addiction, passion, and, above all, an emotion. This confusion has consequences in the lives of human beings, leading not only to divorces, suicides, femicides but possibly also to a number of mental illnesses and suffering. Therefore, it is crucial to first clarify what is meant by emotion, motivation and love. This work aims to finally place love within the category of physiological motivations, such as hunger, thirst, sleep, or sex, on the basis that love is also essential for human survival, especially in childhood. Love is presented from an evolutionary perspective. Some other similarities between love and other physiological motivations are pointed out, such as its importance for appropriate human development, both its ontogeny and its permanence, and the long-lasting consequences of abuse and neglect. There are summarized reasons that account for this, such as the fact that physiological motivations are essential for survival and that love is an essential motivation for the survival of human offspring. Other reasons are that minimum changes in the quantity and quality of love alters development, that there can be a variety of neurophysiological and behavioural states within a motivation, and that motivations (also love) appear and change throughout development. Also, motivations and love sometimes may lead to an addictive behaviour. Finally, it is recognized that once physiological motivations (and love) appear, they become permanent. In a third section, some potential social, cultural, clinical and scientific consequences of the proposed consideration of love as a motivation are discussed. Accordingly, love's recognition as a motivation in the clinical field would imply a better understanding of its disorders and its inclusion in classifications manuals such as The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), or in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Considering love as a motivation rather than an emotion could also impact the results of scientific research (an example is included). A comprehensive understanding of these questions could potentially allow for a new therapeutic approach in the treatment of mental illness, while offering an all-inclusive evolutionary explanation of cultural phenomena such as the origin and diffusion of both language and art. Love should be understood as a physiological motivation, like hunger, sleep or sex, and not as an emotion as it is commonly considered.

The Shifting Architecture of Cognition and Brain Function in Older Adulthood

Cognitive aging is often described in the context of loss or decline. Emerging research suggests that the story is more complex, with older adults showing both losses and gains in cognitive ability. With increasing age, declines in controlled, or fluid, cognition occur in the context of gains in crystallized knowledge of oneself and the world. This inversion in cognitive capacities, from greater reliance on fluid abilities in young adulthood to increasingly crystallized or semanticized cognition in older adulthood, has profound implications for cognitive and real-world functioning in later life. The shift in cognitive architecture parallels changes in the functional network architecture of the brain. Observations of greater functional connectivity between lateral prefrontal brain regions, implicated in cognitive control, and the default network, implicated in memory and semantic processing, led us to propose the default-executive coupling hypothesis of aging. In this review we provide evidence that these changes in the functional architecture of the brain serve as a neural mechanism underlying the shifting cognitive architecture from younger to older adulthood. We incorporate findings spanning cognitive aging and cognitive neuroscience to present an integrative model of cognitive and brain aging, describing its antecedents, determinants, and implications for real-world functioning.

Intrinsic default-executive coupling of the creative aging brain

Creativity refers to the ability to generate novel associations and has been linked to better problem-solving and real-world functional abilities. In younger adults, creative cognition has been associated with functional connectivity among brain networks implicated in executive control [fronto-parietal network (FPN) and salience network (SN)] and associative or elaborative processing default network (DN). Here, we investigate whether creativity is associated with the intrinsic network architecture of the brain and how these associations may differ for younger and older adults. Young (mean age: 24.76, n = 22) and older (mean age: 70.03, n = 44) adults underwent multi-echo functional magnetic resonance image scanning at rest and completed a divergent-thinking task to assess creative cognition outside the scanner. Divergent thinking in older adults, compared to young adults, was associated with functional connectivity between the default and both executive control networks (FPN and SN) as well as more widespread default-executive coupling. Finally, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex appears to be a critical node involved in within- and between-network connectivity associated with creative cognition in older adulthood. Patterns of intrinsic network coupling revealed here suggest a putative neural mechanism underlying a greater role for mnemonic processes in creative cognition in older adulthood.