Frontal lobe neurology and the creative mind

Abstract

Concepts from cognitive neuroscience strongly suggest that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a crucial role in the cognitive functions necessary for creative thinking. Functional imaging studies have repeatedly demonstrated the involvement of PFC in creativity tasks. Patient studies have demonstrated that frontal damage due to focal lesions or neurodegenerative diseases are associated with impairments in various creativity tasks. However, against all odds, a series of clinical observations has reported the facilitation of artistic production in patients with neurodegenerative diseases affecting PFC, such as frontotemporal dementia (FTD). An exacerbation of creativity in frontal diseases would challenge neuroimaging findings in controls and patients, as well as the theoretical role of prefrontal functions in creativity processes. To explore this paradox, we reported the history of a FTD patient who exhibited the emergence of visual artistic productions during the course of the disease. The patient produced a large amount of drawings, which have been evaluated by a group of professional artists who were blind to the diagnosis. We also reviewed the published clinical cases reporting a change in the artistic abilities in patients with neurological diseases. We attempted to reconcile these clinical observations to previous experimental findings by addressing several questions raised by our review. For instance, to what extent can the cognitive, conative, and affective changes following frontal damage explain changes in artistic abilities? Does artistic exacerbation truly reflect increased creative capacities? These considerations could help to clarify the place of creativity—as it has been defined and explored by cognitive neuroscience—in artistic creation and may provide leads for future lesion studies.

Inhibitory Control as a Core Process of Creative Problem Solving and Idea Generation from Childhood to Adulthood

“…In sharp contrast with this finding, another noninvasive brain stimulation study reported that a hyperactivation of the prefrontal cortex was beneficial for creative production, suggesting that better cognitive control led to better creative ideas generation (Colombo, Bartesaghi, Simonelli, & Antonietti, ). In a similar vein, numerous studies on clinical disorders associated with inhibitory control deficits suggest that impaired cognitive control might facilitate original associations and stimulate creative ideas generation (see de Souza et al., ). We note, however, that these patients rarely exhibited specific deficits in inhibitory control.…”

The contribution of the lesion approach to the neuroscience of creative cognition

“…The table includes studies in patients that related creative abilities to an anatomical location of a lesion or neurodegenerative impairment. Case reports already described in a previous review [60] Progressive supranuclear palsy characterized by atrophy in frontal cortex, basal ganglia, and midbrain; RAT: remote associates task; SD: semantic dementia, that is, temporal variant of frontotemporal lobar degeneration characterized by predominantly temporal atrophy; TTCT: Torrance test of creativity thinking; VBM: voxel-based morphometry; VSLM: voxel-based lesionsymptom mapping analysis. a 'Pure' medial PFC refers to the subset of the medial group that had pure medial or orbitofrontal damage.…”

Klüver & Bucy syndrome: an investigation of social and affective cognition

“…This test has been employed in both clinical and research contexts and provides scores of fluency (the number of productions), flexibility (the ability to provide different categories of productions), originality (the ability to create rare productions) and elaboration (the ability to enrich productions with details); all these creative domains being affected in ASP. It has been demonstrated that brain diseases can impair creative production (Schott, 2012;de Souza et al, 2014). More specifically, reduced creative performance has been related to prefrontal damages (de Souza et al, 2010).…”