Inspiration leaves a mark on the brain

Pablo Picasso said that "inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." When we have a moment of inspiration, we feel a creative impulse growing within us. It allows us to imagine the most spectacular things and often brings us pleasure. But what exactly is inspiration in neurobiological terms? Why does an idea sometimes strike us suddenly, like a spark, and other times seem impossible to conjure?

An international team of researchers from the universities of California and Indiana, led by neuroscientist Shadab Tabatabaeian and human cognition specialist Tyler Marghetis, has just published in the magazine PNAS A study that identifies, for the first time, brain and genetic patterns associated with creativity and inspiration. The results reveal that the creative brain has its own signatures, traces that are detected both when we actively think about something or try to solve a challenge imaginatively, and when we let our minds wander and inspiration suddenly strikes.

For decades, science has been trying to understand what happens in the brain when we are creative. It is known that there isn't a single specific region for creativity; rather, it is the result of collaboration between various neural networks. The most prominent are the default mode network, which is activated when we imagine or daydream, and the executive control network, which directs attention and evaluates ideas reflectively. Creativity arises from the seemingly opposing dialogue between these two forces: letting go and, at the same time, filtering and organizing.

Eureka!

Inspiration, in turn, can be understood as a sudden brain state in which these networks, along with the so-called salience network, synchronize their activity to generate a new or significant connection between ideas. The latter acts as a brain alarm system that detects the most relevant stimuli and decides what we pay attention to. Physiologically, inspiration is a brief transition to a pattern of high cognitive integration, often preceded by a moment of relaxation or mental wandering that allows scattered information to coalesce into a coherent intuition, like a mental shortcut linking diverse areas, each of which contributes some relevant data to the whole. It is the famous Eureka!, which is attributed to Archimedes of Syracuse, when he realized, while bathing, that the volume of water displaced was equal to the volume of the submerged body.

In this study, researchers have gone a step further and sought to identify the brain profile that distinguishes the most creative people. To do this, they combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), genetic data, and divergent thinking tests, such as inventing new uses for everyday objects. The result is astonishing. They have discovered a specific pattern of brain activity that predicts creative performance with considerable accuracy. This pattern includes areas of the default mode network, executive control zones, and, surprisingly, sensory regions. According to the authors, creativity consists of connecting the concrete with the abstract, uniting perceptions and ideas in a dynamic and flexible flow.

The joy of learning

Another new finding is the connection to genetics. Researchers have found that this brain pattern correlates with genes involved in dopamine regulation. Dopamine is a key neurotransmitter in motivation, pleasure, and learning. This suggests that more creative people may have more dynamic dopaminergic modulation, which favors the generation of new associations and cognitive flexibility. However, there is no single "creativity gene," but rather a combination of biological and environmental factors that facilitate its emergence.

To test whether these differences are stable, the team compared the creative pattern they discovered with brain scans of volunteers at rest, allowing them to predict each participant's creative level. The creative brain, they say, leaves traces even when it's not actively working. However, this doesn't mean that creativity can be measured with a scanner. Nor does it mean that all domains of creativity, such as music, science, design, or literature, follow the same neural pathways. At the brain level, designing a scientific experiment isn't as different as it might seem from using a metaphor in a poem. Brain signatures show that, fundamentally, we all use the same mental architecture to imagine and create.

Beyond scientific curiosity, these results have practical implications. Knowing that creativity depends on the interaction between neural networks and neurotransmitters can help in designing educational and work environments that foster it. For example, alternating periods of concentration with mental relaxation, such as taking a walk or letting the mind wander, are principles that psychology and pedagogy had already intuited, but which neuroscience has now confirmed.