The Science of Creativity & How to Enhance Creative Innovation
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In this episode, I explain how the brain engages in creative thinking and, based on that mechanistic understanding, the tools to improve one’s ability to think creatively and innovate in any area. I discuss how convergent and divergent thinking are essential for generating creative ideas and provide three types of meditation tools (open monitoring meditation, focused attention meditation & non-sleep deep rest; NSDR), which improve our ability to engage in these creative thinking patterns in specific and powerful ways. I also discuss how dopamine and mood contribute to the creative process and describe behavioral, nutritional and supplementation-based approaches for increasing dopamine to engage in creative thought and implementation. I explain how movement and storytelling (narrative) approaches can generate novel creative ideas and how substances like alcohol, cannabis, and psilocybin impact our creative ability. Excitingly, creativity is a skill that can be cultivated and enhanced; this episode outlines many tools to help anyone access creativity and apply creative patterns of thought to different domains of life.
Articles
- Open monitoring meditation reduces the involvement of brain regions related to memory function (Scientific Reports)
- The (b)link between creativity and dopamine: Spontaneous eye blink rates predict and dissociate divergent and convergent thinking (Cognition)
- Increased dopamine tone during meditation-induced change of consciousness (Cognitive Brain Research)
- Exploring the effect of microdosing psychedelics on creativity in an open-label natural setting (Psychopharmacology)
- A new method for training creativity: narrative as an alternative to divergent thinking (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
- More creative through positive mood? Not everyone! (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience)
- Dopaminergic control of cognitive flexibility in humans and animals (Frontiers in Neuroscience)
Other Resources
Huberman Lab Essentials are short episodes focused on essential science and protocol takeaways from past full-length Huberman Lab episodes.
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