Mapping the neural mechanisms of creativity by convergent and divergent thinking in school-aged children: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

Creativity is essential to children's learning, career development and well-being. Divergent and convergent thinking are the central components of creativity, which is a compound high-order cognitive ability. However, most existing behavioral and neuroimaging studies have only tested the characteristics of a single component of creativity. The neurological mechanism of creativity from the construct of divergent and convergent thinking needs to be explored by a more comprehensive approach. In this functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study, we investigated neural activity in 69 school-aged children while they worked on creative tasks involving divergent and convergent thinking. Their divergent and convergent thinking abilities were evaluated using the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) and Remote Association Task (RAT), respectively. When working with a divergent thinking task, we found that neural activation was higher in the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) than when working with a convergent thinking task. In addition, a significant positive correlation was found between HbO activation in the MFG and performance on the divergent thinking task, while a significant positive correlation was found between HbO activation in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and performance on the convergent thinking task. These results suggest different neural mechanisms of the two main components of creativity. Divergent thinking may be modulated more by top-down executive control networks during the idea generation stage. In contrast, convergent thinking may be modulated more by integrating semantic information into coherent representations during the idea selection stage. Our study contributes toward the theoretical integration of the complex structure of creativity. We also provide neural evidence showing that divergent and convergent thinking may be modulated by idea generation and the selection process of creative thinking.