#30DaysOfScikuChallenge
That Aha! Moment
Day 16 Prompt: Evolutionary Neuroscience Inspired Sciku
Aha! Moments
Artist, researcher, or writer
neural reward -a must
From tool making, culture, fire, and even language — key ingredients of human evolutionary success have at least one thing in common — our ability to imagine something and then making it real — ‘to make it our own’, or ‘put our own spin on it’ — aka creativity.
No doubt that innovative ideas and solutions to existing problems have enabled our species to survive existential threats and even find new ways to thrive. Yet, researchers have long questioned whether creativity is necessary for survival; after all, there are many species that do not possess it, and they have managed to flourish far longer than humans.
So — Is there an evolutionary mechanism that promoted the development of creativity?
A new study provides some insights that suggest that in some people, creative insights (aka: “aha moments”) trigger a burst of activity in the brain’s reward system.
“Because reward-system activity motivates the behaviors that produce it, individuals who experience insight-related neural rewards are likely to engage in further creativity-related activities, potentially to the exclusion of other activities — a notion that many puzzle aficionados, mystery-novel devotees, starving artists and underpaid researchers may find familiar, according to Kounios.”
The authors separated individuals into two separate groups base on their reward sensitivity and report that individuals with the low-reward-sensitivity group experience nearly as many insights as the high-reward-sensitivity ones, but their insights did not trigger a significant neural reward response. Suggesting that neural reward might occur in many people, but it is not a necessary accompaniment to insight.
Their results further suggest that measurements of general reward sensitivity may help to predict who will practice, develop, and expand their creative abilities over time — An insight that perhaps every parent and caregiver can take some comfort in — Just like every other aspect of human preferences, some of us will prefer to solve puzzles and write songs, and some of us would prefer to sing or simply enjoy them — creativity is perhaps written in our DNA. Still, it expresses in a unique manner for each individual.
Perhaps the most successful aspect of creativity for human evolutionary success is — our ability to cooperate and harness our collective intelligence for solving new and old problems that can help us adapt better as a species.
Here’s to finding our unique version of creative expression and sharing it for the collective good — thank you so much for reading!
This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified professional with any questions you may have regarding a medical or mental health condition.
*This is Day 16 of the #sciku challenge — science-inspired haiku-like poetry( so #sciku?) prompts to get you inspired — Our dear readers — why not spend some time each day creating and having a little fun — if you do — publish it anywhere on medium, just tag it with — #30DaysOfScikuChallenge.
**Tagging Lynn E. O’Connor, Ph.D. Laura Griffith Machado, PsyD, Aravind Balakrishnan, and anyone else who feels inspired to follow and/or play along with this fun #30DaysOfScikuChallenge and today’s prompt: Evolutionary Neuroscience
What’s next —
The latest from by Melissa Gouty:
Or read about predictive coding by The MIND Foundation
