Cognitive And Neural Mechanism Of Creativity Following Short-term Integrative Body-mind Training

Previous investigations have suggested that meditation training improves human creativity. When most of these trainings were conducted with long-term (over years) practice beneficial to creativity, there still some research works have indicated that a relationship between creativity and short-term (one to. six months) meditation appears inconclusive. However, differences of meditation strategies used in various meditation techniques are largely ignored and the length of practice affected creative thinking is not adequately considered. In addition, little is known about the cognitive mechanism and brain systems underling this facilitation. Compared to traditional meditation training, the integrative body-mind training (IBMT) incorporates many key aspects of meditation training. Such technique has been proved to have broad positive effects on attention and emotions and trigger more brain activities in cingulate gyrus and insula. This combination may amplify the training effect over the use of only one of meditation strategies. Because of its close relationships with creativity, IBMT was used as a meditation intervention in our study to explore the cognitive and neural mechanism of creativity following meditation. The same amount of a relaxation training (RT) was used as an active control. Subjects were randomly and evenly assigned to IBMT group or RT group. The main contents and results are as follows.1. We examine whether short-term IBMT can improve creativity. The results indicated that short-term IBMT training yielded a better creativity performance as measured by Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) than RT.2. We determine which people are more likely to have more creative improvement triggered by IBMT. The results indicated that the TTCT score improved significantly after IBMT. However, some IBMT participants showed different trends from the mean values. The linear regression showed that five significant predictors in pre-test including depression, anger, fatigue, introversion×vigor, and emotional stability×vigor accounted for57%of the variance in the changed TTCT score before and after IBMT. Therefore, mood and personality may be useful tools to predict the variability of short-term IBMT in improving creativity.3. We study the effects of short-term IBMT on whole body’s skin conductance response and seek to explore its relationship with emotion. Before training, upper body’s skin conductance response scores were higher than other parts in two groups. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between skin conductance response levels of1,2and3section and negative emotions. After training, the whole body’s skin conductance response was found to be regulated to the same level by IBMT but not RT. The current outcomes indicated that IBMT improved functioning of harmonizing mind-body interactions and regulated psychological and physiological states.4. We determine the role that mood may play in creative improvement following IBMT. The results indicated that short-term IBMT yielded better creative performance and emotional regulation than RT. In addition, cross-lagged analysis indicated that both positive and negative affect may influence creativity in IBMT group (not RT group). Our results suggested that emotion-related creativity-promoting mechanism may be attributed to short-term meditation.5. We explore the brain systems underling insight into a problem when the person fails to solve the problem themselves. We examined the neural correlation using Chinese Remote Association Test, as a measure of creativity. We provide a solution following the failure of the participant to provide one. We examine how meditation training in comparison with relaxation training influences the reaction of the participant to a correct solution. The event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging showed greater activity, mainly distributed in the right cingulate gyrus, the insula, the putamen, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the bilateral middle frontal gyrus, the inferior parietal lobule and the superior temporal gyrus.