The Science of Creativity & How to Enhance Creative Innovation

In this episode, I explain how the brain engages in creative thinking and, based on that mechanistic understanding, the tools to improve one’s ability to think creatively and innovate in any area. I discuss how convergent and divergent thinking are essential for generating creative ideas and provide three types of meditation tools (open monitoring meditation, focused attention meditation & non-sleep deep rest; NSDR), which improve our ability to engage in these creative thinking patterns in specific and powerful ways. I also discuss how dopamine and mood contribute to the creative process and describe behavioral, nutritional and supplementation-based approaches for increasing dopamine to engage in creative thought and implementation. I explain how movement and storytelling (narrative) approaches can generate novel creative ideas and how substances like alcohol, cannabis, and psilocybin impact our creative ability. Excitingly, creativity is a skill that can be cultivated and enhanced; this episode outlines many tools to help anyone access creativity and apply creative patterns of thought to different domains of life.

Articles

• Open monitoring meditation reduces the involvement of brain regions related to memory function (Scientific Reports)
• The (b)link between creativity and dopamine: Spontaneous eye blink rates predict and dissociate divergent and convergent thinking (Cognition)
• Increased dopamine tone during meditation-induced change of consciousness (Cognitive Brain Research)
• Exploring the effect of microdosing psychedelics on creativity in an open-label natural setting (Psychopharmacology)
• A new method for training creativity: narrative as an alternative to divergent thinking (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
• More creative through positive mood? Not everyone! (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience)
• Dopaminergic control of cognitive flexibility in humans and animals (Frontiers in Neuroscience)

Other Resources

• 10-minute NSDR