Creative Mind — A Reading List

Learning about the inner work of a creative brain is a lifelong endeavour. New studies constantly update and change what we already know about the human brain, so chances are that the primer that you’ve just read would have to be updated regularly.

But for now, here’s where you can learn more — about the existing studies, about the complex concepts that we have grossly oversimplified here to make the scientific knowledge accessible, and about brave artists who have loaned their brains to the neuroscientists.

Learn, think, apply in your own life, and come back to to drop us a comment if you know of a publication or a video that should totally be on this list. Improvise!

1. Video
2. Podcasts
3. Books
4. Articles

Video

Your Brain on Improv by Dr. Charles Limb

The Neuroscience of Creativity by Dr. Heather A. Berlin and rapper Baba Brinkman

The Neuroscience of Creativity, Flow, and Openness to Experience by Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman

Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality by Dr. Anil Seth

Rewiring the Anxious Brain — Neuroplasticity and the Anxiety Cycle by Emma McAdam

Podcasts

This is your brain on improv

This is your brain on improvisation-and why your creativity depends on it

Books

Recommended reading

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. Basic Books.
• DesMaisons, T. (2019). Playful Mindfulness: A Joyful Journey to Everyday Confidence, Calm, and Connection. ANIMA Learning.
• Drinko, C. (2013). Theatrical Improvisation, Consciousness, and Cognition. Springer.
• Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Gallwey, W. T. (2014). The Inner Game of Tennis: The Ultimate Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance. Pan Macmillan.
• Lewis, J. (2016). How to Teach Improvised Comedy: Using the Science of Expertise to Develop Masterful Improvisors.
• Nachmanovitch, S. (2019). The Art of Is: Improvising as a Way of Life. Blackstone Publishing.

More reading

• Abraham, A. (2018). The Neuroscience of Creativity. Cambridge University Press.
• Bennett, R. (2018). Inside Improvisation: The Science Behind Theatrical Improvisation and How to Get Better. Academy of Improvisation Press.
• Blair, R. (2007). The Actor, Image, and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience. Routledge.
• Herman, D. (2013). Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind. MIT Press.
• Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1988). The Computer and the Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Science. Harvard University Press.
• Jung, R. E., & Vartanian, O. (Eds.). (2018). The Cambridge Handbook of the Neuroscience of Creativity. Cambridge University Press.
• OECD. (2007). Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science.
• Sawyer, K. (2003). Improvised Dialogues: Emergence and Creativity in Conversation. Greenwood Publishing Group.
• Sawyer, K. (2017). Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. Basic Books.
• Vartanian, O., Bristol, A. S., & Kaufman, J. C. (Eds.). (2013). Neuroscience of Creativity. MIT Press.

Articles and book chapters

Agnoli, S., Vanucci, M., Pelagatti, C., & Corazza, G. E. (2018). Exploring the Link Between Mind Wandering, Mindfulness, and Creativity: A Multidimensional Approach. Creativity Research Journal, 30(1), 41–53.

Akimoto, T. (2020). Story-Centric View on the Mind. In BICA 2019: Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 2019 (pp.11–14). Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Amir, O., & Biederman, I. (2016). The Neural Correlates of Humor Creativity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 597.

Bashwiner, D. M., Wertz, C. J., Flores, R. A., & Jung, R. E. (2016). Musical Creativity “Revealed” in Brain Structure: Interplay Between Motor, Default Mode, and Limbic Networks. Scientific Reports, 6, 20482.

Baumer, A., & Magerko, B. (2010). An Analysis of Narrative Moves in Improvisational Theatre. in Joint International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (Pp. 165–175). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Beaty, R. E. (2015). The Neuroscience of Musical Improvisation. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 51, 108–117.

Beaty, R. E., & Schacter, D. L. (2017). Creativity, Self-Generated Thought, and the Brain’s Default Network. in The Creative Self (Pp. 171–183). Academic Press.

Beaty, R. E., Benedek, M., Silvia, P. J., & Schacter, D. L. (2016). Creative Cognition and Brain Network Dynamics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(2), 87–95.

Beaty, R. E., Seli, P., & Schacter, D. L. (2019). Network Neuroscience of Creative Cognition: Mapping Cognitive Mechanisms and Individual Differences in the Creative Brain. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 27, 22–30.

Berkovich-Ohana, A., Glicksohn, J., Ben-Soussan, T. D., & Goldstein, A. (2017). Creativity Is Enhanced by Long-Term Mindfulness Training and Is Negatively Correlated with Trait Default-Mode-Related Low-Gamma Inter-Hemispheric Connectivity. Mindfulness, 8(3), 717–727.

Betts, K., Miller, M., Tokuhama-Espinosa, T., Shewokis, P., Anderson, A., Borja, C., Galoyan, T., Delaney, B., Eigenauer, J., & Dekker, S. (2019). International report: Neuromyths and evidence-based practices in higher education. Online Learning Consortium: Newburyport, MA.

Brisson, A., Magerko, B., & Paiva, A. (2011). Tilt Riders: Improvisational Agents Who Know What the Scene Is About. in International Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Agents (Pp. 35–41). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Capurso, V., Fabbro, F., & Crescentini, C. (2014). Mindful Creativity: The Influence of Mindfulness Meditation on Creative Thinking. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 1020.

Chrysikou, E. G. (2019). Creativity in and out of (cognitive) control. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 27, 94–99.

Clark, A. (2018). A Nice Surprise? Predictive Processing and the Active Pursuit of Novelty. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 17(3), 521–534.

de Bruin, L. R. (2018). Evolving regulatory processes used by students and experts in the acquiring of improvisational skills: A qualitative study. Journal of Research in Music Education, 65(4), 483–507.

Deng, Y., Zhang, B., Zheng, X., Liu, Y., Wang, X., & Zhou, C. (2019). The role of mindfulness and self-control in the relationship between mind-wandering and metacognition. Personality and Individual Differences, 141, 51–56.

Dietrich, A. (2015). Flow Experiences: From Mystery to Mechanism. in How Creativity Happens in the Brain (Pp. 163–183). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Eger, M., & Mathewson, K. W. (2018). dAIrector: Automatic Story Beat Generation Through Knowledge Synthesis. Arxiv Preprint Arxiv:1811.03423.

Felsman, P., Gunawardena, S., & Seifert, C. M. (2020). Improv experience promotes divergent thinking, uncertainty tolerance, and affective well-being. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 35, 100632.

Gabora, L., & Unrau, M. (2019). The Role of Engagement, Honing, and Mindfulness in Creativity. in Creativity Under Duress in Education? (Pp. 137–154). Springer, Cham.

Gray, K., Anderson, S., Chen, E. E., Kelly, J. M., Christian, M. S., Patrick, J., … & Lewis, K. (2019). “Forward flow”: A new measure to quantify free thought and predict creativity. American Psychologist.

Harris, D. J., Vine, S. J., & Wilson, M. R. (2017). Neurocognitive Mechanisms of the Flow State. in Progress in Brain Research (Vol. 234, Pp. 221–243). Elsevier.

Heinonen J, Numminen J, Hlushchuk Y, Antell H, Taatila V, Suomala J. (2016). Default Mode and Executive Networks Areas: Association with the Serial Order in Divergent Thinking. Plos ONE 11(9): E0162234.

Kleinmintz, O. M., Ivancovsky, T., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. (2019). The twofold model of creativity: the neural underpinnings of the generation and evaluation of creative ideas. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 27, 131–138.

Limb, C. J., & Braun, A. R. (2008). Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation. Plos ONE, 3(2), E1679.

Lösel, G. (2018). Can Robots Improvise?. Liminalities, 14(1), 185–206.

Magerko, B., Manzoul, W., Riedl, M., Baumer, A., Fuller, D., Luther, K., & Pearce, C. (2009). An Empirical Study of Cognition and Theatrical Improvisation. in Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition (Pp. 117–126). ACM.

Millière, R., Carhart-Harris, R. L., Roseman, L., Trautwein, F. M., & Berkovich-Ohana, A. (2018). Psychedelics, Meditation, and Self-Consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology, 9.

Mok, L. W. (2014). The Interplay Between Spontaneous and Controlled Processing in Creative Cognition. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 663.

O’Neill, B., Piplica, A., Fuller, D., & Magerko, B. (2011). A Knowledge-Based Framework for the Collaborative Improvisation of Scene Introductions. in International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (Pp. 85–96). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Schwenke, D., Dshemuchadse, M., Rasehorn, L., Klarhölter, D., & Scherbaum, S. (2020). Improv to Improve: The Impact of Improvisational Theater on Creativity, Acceptance, and Psychological Well-Being. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 1–18.

Valgeirsdottir, D., & Onarheim, B. (2017). Studying creativity training programs: A methodological analysis. Creativity and Innovation Management, 26(4), 430–439.