Neural Mechanism of Creative Thinking

Creative thinking is the fundamental part of creativity. At present, neural mechanism of creative thinking is becoming more and more interesting to cognitive neuroscientists with Electroencephalogram (EEG), functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and other neuroimaging techniques. The present article reviewed recent studies of the biological correlates of creative thinking (e.g., insight, divergent thinking, remote associate, contrast of verbal and figure creative activity). Those results showed that creative thinking is associated with several key regions of the brain in different cognitive tasks. Finally, problems existed in past studies and prospects in the future were discussed briefly.