Gender differences in creative thinking: behavioral and fMRI findings.

Gender differences in creativity have been widely studied in behavioral investigations, but this topic has rarely been the focus of neuroscientific research. The current paper presents follow-up analyses of a previous fMRI study (Abraham et al., Neuropsychologia 50(8):1906-1917, 2012b), in which behavioral and brain function during creative conceptual expansion as well as general divergent thinking were explored.

Creativity and the brain: uncovering the neural signature of conceptual expansion.

Neurophysiological studies of creativity thus far have not allowed for clear conclusions to be made regarding the specific neural underpinnings of such complex cognition due to overgeneralizations concerning the creativity construct, heterogeneity in the type of creativity tasks used, and the questionable efficacy of the employed comparison tasks. A novel experimental design was developed in the present fMRI study which rendered it possible to investigate a critical facet of creative cognition - that of conceptual expansion - as distinct from general divergent thinking, working memory, or cognitive load. Brain regions involved in the retention, retrieval and integration of conceptual knowledge such as the anterior inferior frontal gyrus, the temporal poles and the lateral frontopolar cortex were found to be selectively involved during conceptual expansion.