Innovation Evolution pt.II

How many of us are accustomed to the old maxim of ‘left-sided logic’ and the right-side of the brain being the artistic and creative? It is almost like we as young children are grouped into a binary enclosure of maths or art.

Jordan Coles
Eye-to-Eye
6 min readMar 4, 2021

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It’s easy to understand a binary conception of the brain, but it is of course a myth. The brain is, unsurprisingly, a hugely complex web of interconnected, both opposing and tandem, networks. New research is now illuminating the extent to which connections result in creativity and whether ingenuity can be predicted. The results are not as expected.

We have an innate ability to solve problems and create solutions. We can now create population-wide behavioural changes using few billion pixels and a screen. No doubt, our ingenuity is a pillar and hallmark of cultural and technological progression — It is what makes us human.

Despite advances in the neuroscience of human innovation however, we still lack a concrete understanding of the causality which leads to fundamental neural architecture sparking ideation. We have taken huge strides, now being able to model an individual’s creative spark as a function of variation in whole-brain functional connectivity and understand that ideation comes from neural circuits which normally oppose one another. We now believe a person’s capacity to generate original ideas can be reliably predicted from the strength of functional connectivity of their neural network, meaning a brain’s connectivity profile can predict your ingenuity.

But we still cannot understand why some foster these connection, even when their genes do not carry this trait — What creates creativity is still, near enough, a mystery.

Photo by Rock'n Roll Monkey on Unsplash

So let’s quickly recap what is going on first. Researchers have known for number of years that a mind enveloped in creative work uses all three main pillars of the brain; The big 3 of the default, salient and executive networks all work in unison, where they usual work against each other. “The default mode network generates ideas, the executive control network evaluates them, and the salience network helps to identify which ideas get passed along to the executive control network,” as Brenner stipulates*.

Amongst the huge number of independent network in the brain the three dominant neural mega-networks involved here are; the default-mode network (DMN), salience network (SN), and central-executive network (CEN).

DMN — Daydreaming and mind-wandering. It is sometimes referred to as the task-negative network given its inability to take active decisions

SN — Control of the active decisions in selecting which stimuli we should concentrate on in that moment

CEN —Supports our current attention span and the items we commit to memory given the stimuli in front of us in that moment

Neurologists have time-and-time again found that CEN and SN negatively regulate activity in the DMN, meaning they limit one another. One way to think about these is through the process of mediation and mindfulness; A focus on what you are grateful for is associated with the central executive network (CEN), a wandering or distracted mind was the default mode network (DMN) and an awareness of this distraction or being ‘away with the fairies’ is due to activations in the salience network (SN). You don’t need to understand exactly what they do but just important to know they each hold different tasks and are activated by different neural processes**.

However, when someone is fostering ideas and building solutions outside the walls of commonality, we use these three normally opposing networks together. Bizarre it may be, but it seems ingenuity comes from being both perplexed and focused at the same time. It leads to an obvious conclusion that anyone can innovate, but the extent to which it can be taught vs. born with vs. innate in some more than others is the question still ironically baffling some of the world’s best abstract thinkers.

But what makes someone creative, and another logical? For every study on the brain’s creative networking, there is another on how psychology initiates ideation. Studies in children reveal that by watching another be creative, viewing a fantasy film or unstructured play encourages new insights, analytical thinking, and creativity.

The brain is a muscle, responding to training and stress put on by challenging situations. Specialised career paths allow for someone to become expert in a single field, but an absence of a kind learning environment [being one which allows for repetition to foster positive results rather than cognitive thought] does not allow your brain to exercise outside of your chosen field. It seems as thought the key to creative problem solving exists in the areas you are an amateur in, where you do not allow the problem to be constrained by a narrow field of expertise, and instead tap into those disciplines outside of the task field and consider ulterior angles of attack.

It is an intriguing philosophy that to become the master, you need to seek out becoming an amateur.

Of course specialists and single career paths are enormously valuable, but an increasing wealth of data and information suggests this new information should not be of a single focus or meaning, but instead should be leveraged by curious dilettantes who merge strands from a complex web of individual disciplines. There are too many examples of how a 30+ year experiment into a mysterious problem was solved by an amateur maverick with no relative experience in the field.

One such example comes in the book Range by David Epstein where he tells of a hyper-specialised chemist named Alph Bingham. As he tries to solve molecular synthesis in the mid-1970’s [forgive me of the details], he noticed all of the interesting possible solutions came from outsider perspectives. One such came from caviar where the links between each pearl or molecule gave the angle of attack that Bingham was looking for.

I am fascinated at the idea that learning through being the amateur within many different fields holds a much steeper experience curve and more complex learning environment than becoming an expert in one. It is an intriguing philosophy that to become the master, you need to seek out becoming an amateur.

Helping to string together and merge the DMN, SN and CEN together in a more cohesive way can lead to powerful boosts in ingenuity and innovation in every day problem-solving. The functional connections experienced in un-kind learning environments, watching others creative process and becoming the amateur might be the difference in solving the myriad of current and future problems, both at a global and local scale. But, one thing is for sure and that is the old maxim of left / right brain split is not the whole picture.

So we know how it occurs, and the effect it has, but the causality of connections between opposing networks is unknown. My outsider diagnosis points to learning environments and experience is the innovative spark that helps some generate ideas in a wide range of disciplines, with an individuals network-strength in their brains being a catalyst for this. However, it seems this is a question that amateurs like myself may not be able to shed much light on.

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