Secrets of Creativity

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Secrets of Creativity

What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal

First Edition

Edited by Suzanne Nalbantian and Paul M. Matthews

New discoveries about creativity that help advance the field of creativity research
Interdisciplinary approach featuring neuroscientists, psychologists, and humanities scholars
Exclusive interview with renowned novelist Richard Powers examining his creative process

Secrets of Creativity

What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal

First Edition

Edited by Suzanne Nalbantian and Paul M. Matthews

Description

Secrets of Creativity: What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal draws on insights from leading neuroscientists and scholars in the humanities and the arts to probe creativity in its many contexts, in the everyday mind, the exceptional mind, the scientific mind, the artistic mind, and the pathological mind. Components of creativity are specified with respect to types of memory, forms of intelligence, modes of experience, and kinds of emotion. Authors in this volume take on the challenge of showing how creativity can be characterized behaviorally, cognitively, and neurophysiologically. The complementary perspectives of the authors add to the richness of these findings. Neuroscientists describe the functioning of the brain and its circuitry in creative acts of scientific discovery or aesthetic production. Humanists from the fields of literature, art, and music give analyses of creativity in major literary works, musical compositions, and works of visual art.

Secrets of Creativity

What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal

First Edition

Edited by Suzanne Nalbantian and Paul M. Matthews

Table of Contents

Introduction by Suzanne Nalbantian, "The Twists and Turns of Creativity: An Overview from Neuroscience and the Arts"

Part I: Theories of Creativity

1. Jean-Pierre Changeux, "Artistic Creativity: A Neuronal Hypothesis"
2. Oshin Vartanian, "Fluid Intelligence, Working Memory and Creativity: A Componential View"
3. Robert J. Sternberg, "The Psychology of Creativity"
4. Charlotte Stagg and Geraint A. Wiggins, "Clues to Human Creativity: From Neurons to Computation"

Part II: Creativity and the Brain

5. Marcus Raichle, "Creativity and the Brain's Default Network"
6. Robert Stickgold, "Creativity of the Dream and Sleep State"
7. Paul M. Matthews, "Creativity: Lessons from Disease, Drugs and Neuroimaging"
8. Nancy C. Andreasen, "Using Neuroscience to Image the Creative Brain"

Part III: Mechanisms of Creativity

9. Alcino J. Silva and John Bickle, "Memory Linking and Creativity: Underlying Molecular, Cellular and Circuit Mechanisms"
10. Jaak Panksepp, "Emotional Foundations of Creativity: The Brain's SEEKING System"
11. Liane Gabora, "Creativity and the Self-Made World View"

Part IV: Literary Creativity in Context

12. Peter Schneck, "Henry James and the Creative Process: The Stewpot of the Imagination"
13. John Burt Foster, "Contrasting Modes of Creativity: Artist Counterparts in Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Nabokov"
14. Suzette Henke, "Twentieth-Century Pathological Writers and Their Creativity: Joyce, Woolf and D. H. Lawrence"
15. Donald R. Wehrs, "Conceptual Blending and Genre Invention from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes and Shakespeare"

Part V: Aesthetics and Creativity

16. Suzanne Nalbantian, "Creativity in Modernist Literary Writers: Acts of Mental Transformation"
17. Mark Hussey, "Significant Form and Aesthetic Emotion: Bloomsbury Theorizes Modern Art's 'Mysterious Laws' of Creativity"
18. John Onians, "The Distinctive Creativity of Leonardo and Michelangelo: A Perspective from Neuroarthistory"
19. Bruce Adolphe, "The Musical Imagination: Mystery and Method in Musical Composition"

Part VI: An Interview with Richard Powers: Creativity and the Contemporary Novelist

Bios of Contributors

Secrets of Creativity

What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal

First Edition

Edited by Suzanne Nalbantian and Paul M. Matthews

Author Information

Suzanne Nalbantian is Professor of Comparative Literature at Long Island University and an interdisciplinary scholar who is Chair of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA) Research Committee on Literature and Neuroscience. She is the author of four scholarly books and two edited volumes. Her book Memory in Literature: From Rousseau to Neuroscience (Palgrave 2003) forged new pathways linking literary depictions of memory to neuroscience. She is the principal editor of The Memory Process: Neuroscientific and Humanistic Perspectives (MIT Press 2011), which features original essays by both humanists and brain scientists. She has lectured widely throughout the U.S. and Europe on the topic of memory at such institutions as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Collège de France (Paris), the European Science Foundation, Max-Planck (Tübingen), and the Pasteur Institute (Paris). She has directed interdisciplinary symposia in Neuroscience and the Humanities at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, NY and at ICLA congresses in Paris and Vienna.

Paul M. Matthews is the Edmund J. and Lily Safra Chair of Translational Neuroscience and Therapeutics, Head of the Division of Brain Sciences in the Department of Medicine of Imperial College, London, and Associate Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute. He is Fellow by Special Election in St. Edmund Hall, Oxford and holds Visiting Professorships at McGill University, Nanyang Technological University and the University of Edinburgh. Professor Matthews was awarded an OBE in 2008 for services to neuroscience and was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2014. He is the co-author of over 380 scientific papers. He is also co-author (with Jeffrey McQuain) of the book The Bard on the Brain: Understanding the Mind through the Art of Shakespeare and the Science of Brain Imaging and co-editor (with Suzanne Nalbantian and James McClelland) of The Memory Process: Neuroscientific and Humanistic Perspectives (MIT Press 2011).

Contributors:

Editors

Suzanne Nalbantian
Paul M. Matthews

Contributors

Bruce Adolphe
Nancy Andreasen
John Bickle
Jean-Pierre Changeux
John Burt Foster
Liane Gabora
Suzette Henke
Mark Hussey
Paul M. Matthews
Suzanne Nalbantian
John Onians
The Late Jaak Panksepp
Richard Powers
Marcus E. Raichle
Peter Schneck
Alcino J. Silva
Charlotte Stagg
Robert J. Sternberg
Robert Stickgold
Oshin Vartanian
Donald Wehrs
Geraint A. Wiggins

Secrets of Creativity

What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal

First Edition

Edited by Suzanne Nalbantian and Paul M. Matthews

Reviews and Awards

"In the 1959 Two Cultures, C. P. Snow famously argued for a vast intellectual divide between the sciences and the humanities. Yet the 2019, Secrets of Creativity proves that scientific researchers and humanistic scholars--joined by artistic creators--can meaningfully share their insights concerning a ubiquitous and multifaceted phenomenon. Indeed, creativity can only be fully understood through this conversation among experts in psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, literary studies, art history, creative writing, and musical composition. That conversation renders this volume an interdisciplinary tour de force." -- Dean Keith Simonton, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of California, Davis, and author of The Genius Checklist: Nine Paradoxical Tips about How You Can Become a Creative Genius

"In Secrets of Creativity Suzanne Nalbantian and Paul Matthews have assembled an impressive collection of essays from a stellar group of thinkers in the arts and humanities, as well as from the sciences of mind and brain. This unique volume will have a lasting impact on how we think about creativity." -- Joseph LeDoux , Professor of Neural Science at NYU and author of anxious and of The Deep History of Ourselves

"Supernal spirits from La Mettrie to Langer will be smiling over the brilliant assembly of living theoreticians of science and culture gathered here by humanist Suzanne Nalbantian and scientist Paul M. Matthews who striveÂto rekindle our interdisciplinary discourse over human self-awareness and the astounding range of human expression in light of theÂnewest advances in study of the brain.Â Guided by Nalbantian and her team the reader never loses sight of how mysterious is the evolutionary pathway of creativity -- and then how rapid the newest surges in brain science -- leading to this exciting intellectual juncture." -- Gerald Gillespie , Professor Emeritus in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University and author of Living Streams: Continuity and Change from Rabelais to Joyce

"Creativity is something we all recognize when we witness it, but a mental process that is difficult to pin down. From conceptions entailing preparation, incubation, illumination and verification, through to neuroscience ideas about the diversity of brain areas involved, Nalbantian and Matthews brilliantly orchestrate a panoply of ideas from the sciences and the humanities. This is not a "how to" book, but a thoughtful reflection, bringing in also social and cultural influences such as those which led to the magical blending of ideas in Cervantes and Shakespeare. A book to help us understand better those amazing "aha" moments of our lives." -- Richard Morris FRS, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Edinburgh and co-editor of The Hippocampus Book