Nailing Jelly To The Wall

On reposition friday we went to a conference by Arne Dietrich, who is a neuroscientist. The name of his conference was Trying to nail jelly to the wall, where in the brain is  creativity? 
This is an investigation he has been working on, hunting for cognitive and emotional mechanisms. and how creativity distinguishes human beings from other animals. He divided his presentation into parts: theoretical duds, the evidence and the 4-fold path. 

Theoretical duds:
Creative people are not only those who can paint, compose music or create new things. In economics, technology, history and many other fields, creative people made things happen and made advances and discovery. 
As commonly believed, creativity is not on the right side of the brain. One can´t actually locate creativity in the brain, it is a holistic brain function. 

The evidence: 

• Divergent thinking: generating as many answers as one can. The problem with divergent thinking is that one isolates the process that generates the creativity process. 
• Artistic creativity: design, music and painting. What makes these creative? There are no findings that they come from creativity. 
• Insight events: active and passive insight. Understanding the problem.

The 4-fold pass:

The same neural networks that compute non.novel information are also those that compute variation or novel combinations of that information. Creativity is embedded in every neuro circuit. Everything generates novelty, that is why we cant locate creativity in the brain. 

There are two criteria for creativity: novelty and usefulness. 

There are two ways to have creative ideas: deliberate and spontaneous.