I’m not an authority on the subject and will welcome any different analyses or views and in fact encourage them for the sake of interaction whilst we wait for Imagine- Lehrer’s upcoming book on creativity that's due to be out in March 2012.
I’ll try to elucidate how I think creativity works by explaining various concepts and intersect them.
The best anology I can think of akin to the brain is of the processor, RAM and hard-disk of a computer. When I opened Word to type this, the PC’s processor ran the application MsWord and whatever I typed was temporarily stored in the RAM. Later, fear of losing my work, I saved the document in a permanent folder on the hard-disk.
Similarly, when we shed our mind’s light on something and focus our attention, we can digest a limited amount of information and in a brief period of time, thus we memorize or store limited information to attentively process. And the more we expose ourselves to the information (or if it registers a high emotional impact) it gets stored in the cerebrum’s as a permanent source in the form of neuronal cells that are “on” and ready to be triggered or activated.
However, they also need to be turned “off” and this usually happens when we sleep and the lack of causes them to take turns shutting-off, like workers on shift. This explains why we tend to get obscure and disoriented if we don’t sleep well; parts of our brain are taking turns in recess.
And similar to how an average PC uses around 4GHz of processing power and 4GB of RAM with a relative storage capacity of 250, 320, 500GB are even up to 1Terabytes nowadays; the unconscious can store a lot more than the attention can hold. And that capacity cannot be realized with one’s attention span so a persistent effort to create neuronal cells is necessary. If you haven’t caught on the correlation yet, the processor and RAM of our brains are our attention span and the hard-disk is the cerebrum or unconscious, part of the Telencephalon and Diencephalon.
During the day, we come across terabytes of information that we either consciously or subconsciously process. You can think of the people you pass by or who come in your field of vision and for a moment, will register and then they’re not even a fragment of a memory. I read somewhere that strangers we dream of are people we’ve come across in real life.
Our mind filters information during sleep and either holds on to or discards them depending on their significance. Filtering is an ongoing process. It also very probably describes the “gut” instincts or the hunches we feel but can’t rationalize. So there is, in fact, a very sophisticated process underneath that broad and arbitrary feeling.
This analogy, albeit limited in it’s scope, has far-reaching consequences in that our consciousness is the gateway, or the door-keeper to what we allow entry or exit our minds by focusing our attention. Unfortunately, unlike Eternal Sunshine, we haven’t figured out a way to permanently erase the neurons that store information negative information.
Furthermore, we all have ganglions or groups of neuronal cells, what is generally referred to as the lateral interpreter that is responsible for randomly fusing different thoughts and ideas. You can think of the programming code or the search algorithm that Google uses to retrieve our search requests.
It’s responsible for our ruminating over issues late into the night and for drifting the mind when we get bored or tired and careless. It’s also responsible for creativity although random most of the time (think of all the mistakes one makes in order to finally get it right) it will yield after several attempts. And this causes the corpus striatum (brain’s reward center) to secrete the reward chemicals, a high we’re all too familiar with- day-dreams can be therapeutic sometimes.
Information in our brain exists in the form of flowcharts, by clustering familiar neuronal cells together and forming dendrites and axons (or information highways) throughout that bundle. So when attention is directed towards a particular idea, information that the neurons encapsulate cluster around the particular concept and the random mashing actually generates a structural framework for some genius idea.
Even in matters of thought and cognition, the processing, assimilating and generating facilitated by the lateral interpreter is an interesting experience partly because when we identify the pattern of something, we’re rewarded with the high.
Now, think of a recent movie or tv serial and how, for a moment when you relax, thoughts about it seep through to your consciousness. The randomness of it is so evident sometimes. That is because the information that have high emotional registry remain at the fringes of our consciousness waiting to be activated either consciously or when we default into auto-pilot mode, that plus the experience of decoding the movie is interesting.
I read somewhere that if you want to write a book, you have to read a hundred books first. So say you read a hundred horror novels because you love the genre. The more you read and process the story, the more neurons are built around those concepts and will remain at the periphery for you to either consciously or unconsciously activate.
And that is what we can call creativity. In simple terms, everyone is creative in whatever we’ve constantly been exposed or are exposing ourselves to; it can be language and syntax, it can be video-gaming, it can be whatever you want, just name it (or constantly expose yourself to it).
In this talk by actor/ writer/ comedian Sir John Cleese, he talks about how the creativity process worked for him. He mentions seeking space and time as the two key factors as undisturbed, extended periods in which he would allow the mind to unwind and get emotionally oriented for the characters he would write about.
The likely reason for that is stress. An unwanted phone call can trigger the release of glucocorticoid, a hormone which does us well when we need to be physically alert to act but distorts the intellectual processes and disrupts the formation of neuronal cells because it diverts the body’s metabolic resources away from the higher thinking areas.
Assume, we’re writing for a character that is emotionally turbulent. This requires that we remain in a mode of stress. The difference here is the brain will adopt a stressful intellectual state without being metabolically stressed.
This distinction arises even in real life, when we improve our stress-handling capacity through meditation. The stress makes an intellectual impact but we can avoid it’s biological effects and the emotional distress by stretching our meditative muscles (scientifically, by diverting from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous pathways).
More importantly, the lateral interpreter accesses the endless pit of our unconscious and the countless information stored there, when we’re in a serene mode. It’s an exciting experience because it’s surprising to find knowledge we didn’t know existed.
When athletes, who learn by rote, play against a superstar athlete, they tend to, out of nervousness, be highly alert and self-conscious in the hopes of playing better. Unfortunately, they’ll use their RAM or temporary storage as a source to access their skills rather than the bottomless pit of their unconscious and falter. This is called the Superstar effect. Blame the stress hormone.
The unrestricted access or the ability to tap into our unconscious as a source requires “space and time”. Not to mention a lot of exposition.
If the quality of this article is comme si comme sa because I’ve only read a few books and few more articles about cognition. I am certain, the more information I shove in my cranium and with enough space and time, I can write an excellent piece. Also, check out number 5 in this article which debunks my entire premise.
But maybe I’m right. I can feel it.
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