Close, and ye shall find: Eye closure during thinking enhances creativity

Abstract

Facilitation of creative thinking is an important element for innovation. It has been suggested that cognitive resources are involved in creative thinking; however, little evidence of this involvement has been found. To address this issue, the present study focused on eye closure, which saves more cognitive resources than open eyes. Forty participants experienced both close-eyed and open-eyed conditions, and all of them were asked to generate new names for rice and tea. The results revealed that in the close-eyed condition, participants generated 1.6 times more divergent (unrestricted and flexible) ideas than in the open-eyed condition, suggesting that closing eyes during thinking enhances creativity. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the necessity of cognitive resources in creative thinking.

Five Breakthroughs: A First Approximation of Brain Evolution From Early Bilaterians to Humans

“…First, language and music are built directly on top of the neural structures of mentalizing: they emerge from uniquely primate mentalizing areas such as STS, TPJ, and the prefrontal cortex. Second, mirror neurons have been highly implicated in both theories of language origin as well as language function (Gallese et al, 1996;Rizzolatti et al, 1996;Rizzolatti and Arbib, 1998;Fogassi et al, 2005;Schooler et al, 2011;Vredeveldt et al, 2011;Yonemitsu et al, 2018). Third, people with disorders that disrupt mentalizing abilities, such as autists, also show language impairments (Mitchell et al, 2006;Luyster et al, 2008;Mody and Belliveau, 2013).…”