Creativity involves generating novel and valuable ideas. While the importance of creative thinking is widely acknowledged, its cognitive basis is poorly understood, particularly in older adults. This study aimed to develop and test an explanatory model of creative thinking to elucidate its underlying cognitive functions in an elderly sample. The…

This study investigated whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) can alter the thinking process and neural basis of creativity. Participants' performance on the compound remote associates (CRA) task was analyzed considering the semantic features of each trial after receiving different tDCS…

Chance favors the prepared mind, said Louis Pasteur. Sometimes, significant breakthroughs occur when we creatively integrate new information, leading to a creative insight or an Aha! moment, while at other times when we fail to use a clue, we remain stuck in our habitual thinking patterns. In this study, we hypothesized that the brain's transient…

Associative thinking plays a major role in creativity, as it involves the ability to link distant concepts. Yet, the neural mechanisms allowing to combine distant associates in creative thinking tasks remain poorly understood. We investigated the whole-brain functional connectivity patterns related to combining remote associations for creative…

To evaluate Mednick's theory of the creative thinking process, an associative priming paradigm was used to measure latencies to lexical decisions primed by associations of low, medium, or high strength with 20 high-creative and 20 low-creative high school students. Mednick's theory that creative individuals show a flatter associative hierarchy…

This study was designed to examine the relationship between associative clustering, creative potential, and the slope of associative hierarchies. It was predicted that people whose verbal associations are organized into neatly separated clusters will have lower creative potentials as measured by the Remote Associates Test (RAT) and steeper slopes…