Enhanced insightfulness and neural activation induced by metaphorical solutions to appropriate mental distress problems

Abstract

Although the neural correlates of novelty and appropriateness of creative insight during cognitive tasks have been investigated in several studies, they have not been examined during mental distress in a psychotherapeutic setting. This study aimed to reveal the promoting effects of novelty and appropriateness processing on therapeutic insight in a micro-psychotherapeutic setting. We examined the effects of appropriateness (between-subject factor: appropriateness group, 20 participants; inappropriateness group, 21 participants) by manipulating the preceding negative scenarios that either fit or did not fit the subsequent solutions, and those of novelty (within-subject factor) by varying the linguistic expressions for describing solutions (metaphorical, literal, or problem-restatement). Event-related functional magnetic resonance images were collected. We found the following effects: an interactive effect of the two factors on insightfulness and activation in the bilateral hippocampus and amygdala, right superior frontal gyrus, and left superior/middle temporal gyrus; a simple effect of novelty on activation in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, fusiform gyrus, and inferior/middle occipital gyrus; and a simple effect of appropriateness on activation in the left inferior parietal lobule. Our findings indicate that solutions with high novelty and appropriateness generate the highest levels of therapeutic insightfulness as well as the strongest activation in the hippocampus and amygdala, which may be involved in episodic memory encoding.

The involvement of conflict monitoring and rewards processing in the appropriateness evaluation of creativity: An event-related potential-based analysis.

“…Specifically, appropriate conditions resulted in smaller N2 amplitudes and greater P3 amplitudes in the left, right, and midline brain regions. These findings align with those of previous neuroimaging research, which have demonstrated that both hemispheres contribute to the evaluation of creativity’s appropriateness (e.g., Ellamil et al, 2012; Huang et al, 2018; Liu et al, 2015; Ren et al, 2020, 2023; Tang et al, 2022; Yu et al, 2021; Zhang et al, 2021). For example, Ellamil et al (2012) identified activations in both the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the evaluation of a book cover design.…”

“…For instance, Runco et al (2005) found a low correlation and minimal shared variance (7%) between appropriateness and novelty, indicating their independence. Furthermore, previous neuroimaging studies have identified unique neural substrates for appropriateness and novelty in the spatial dimension of brain activity, albeit with significant variations across studies (Huang et al, 2015, 2018; Ren et al, 2020; Yu et al, 2021). Consistent with these findings, we observed a dissociation between the effects of appropriateness and novelty at the electrophysiological level.…”

“…This finding indicates that appropriateness moderates the effect of novelty on a product's word-of-mouth popularity. Moreover, Yu et al (2021) investigated the role of appropriateness in insightful psychotherapy, which describes a textual micro-counseling dialogue of psychotherapy. They found that participants had significantly higher insightfulness and positive emotion in the appropriate group (i.e., where the solutions fit the scenarios) than in the inappropriate group (i.e., where the solutions did not fit the scenarios), but only when they were presented with metaphorical/novel solutions (rather than literal or problem-reiterating solutions) to the negative scenarios.…”

Neural network of metaphor comprehension: an ALE meta-analysis and MACM analysis

“…While most empirical studies on metaphor comprehension have been conducted on Germanic languages (e.g., Hartung et al, 2020;Rapp et al, 2004Rapp et al, , 2007, a few have been conducted on languages such as Chinese (e.g., Ahrens et al, 2007;Li et al, 2016;Yu et al, 2019Yu et al, , 2021, Hebrew (e.g., Mashal et al, 2005Mashal et al, , 2007Mashal et al, , 2009Mashal et al, , 2013Mashal et al, , 2014Mashal & Faust, 2010), Japanese (e.g., Shibata et al, 2007Shibata et al, , 2012Uchiyama et al, 2012), and Romance languages (e.g., Bambini et al, 2011;Mejía-Constaín et al, 2010).…”

The role of creative cognitive reappraisals in positively transforming negative emotions

“…This “guided‐reappraisal paradigm” also produced more favorable mental representational changes to the unpleasant situation, which had similar features to the self‐generated cognitive reappraisals (Buhle et al, 2014; Ochsner & Gross, 2005, 2008). Besides, this paradigm also maintained the ecological validity of the reappraisal‐regulation strategy, given that in daily life, especially in psychotherapy, individuals also frequently adopt the advice of others to reappraise and regulate psychological distress (see Yu et al, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Liu et al, 2021, for the possible psychotherapeutic applications of the guided insightful metaphorical solution to cope with real life problems).…”