The Science of Creativity & How to Enhance Creative Innovation

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.880 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.120 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.080 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.880 | Today, we are discussing creativity.

00:00:17.320 | Creativity is a topic that to many people is very abstract.

00:00:21.280 | That is, we know when something seems creative,

00:00:24.760 | some of us know people who are creative

00:00:26.680 | or perhaps are creative,

00:00:28.600 | and yet the ability to be creative resides in everybody.

00:00:32.680 | And we know that because the neural circuits

00:00:34.720 | that underlie creativity have been somewhat defined,

00:00:38.300 | and the steps and processes within the brain and body

00:00:40.840 | that lead to creativity are well-known.

00:00:43.720 | That said, most people don't know how to access creativity.

00:00:47.320 | And if they do know how to access creativity,

00:00:49.800 | they are only able to access creativity

00:00:51.560 | in a fairly limited number of domains of life.

00:00:54.060 | For instance, in the visual arts or in music

00:00:57.600 | or within science or engineering

00:00:59.920 | or any number of different domains

00:01:01.600 | ranging from the kitchen to sport to childhood interactions,

00:01:06.600 | that is, childhood games.

00:01:09.160 | In other words, some adults are able to access

00:01:11.280 | their creative spirit when engaging in childlike play

00:01:14.040 | with children or, for that matter, with adults.

00:01:17.360 | But as it turns out, all of creativity

00:01:19.920 | stems from just a small subset of neural structures

00:01:22.560 | in the brain that need to be activated

00:01:24.800 | in a particular sequence or order.

00:01:26.720 | Today, we will talk about what those neural structures are,

00:01:29.280 | what particular order they need to be activated in

00:01:31.880 | in order to come up with, for instance,

00:01:33.780 | new ideas that are creative,

00:01:35.780 | and then how to implement those creative strategies.

00:01:39.280 | We will also talk about different ways to access creativity

00:01:42.360 | that include narrative and storytelling,

00:01:45.240 | as well as applying new rule sets

00:01:47.200 | or even entirely new worldviews.

00:01:49.120 | And we will do this in a structured way

00:01:51.320 | that will allow anyone,

00:01:52.800 | whether or not you consider yourself creative or not,

00:01:55.200 | to be able to apply these tools

00:01:57.600 | in different domains of life,

00:01:58.960 | work, family, play, and on and on.

00:02:01.780 | By the end of today's episode,

00:02:03.020 | you will have a better understanding of what creativity is

00:02:06.880 | and how to access it and, if you like,

00:02:10.060 | to bring others into your creative endeavors,

00:02:12.720 | which, as you'll soon learn,

00:02:14.360 | can massively expand the extent to which you yourself

00:02:17.880 | can express your creative talents.

00:02:19.760 | As is the case with all episodes

00:02:21.480 | of the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:02:23.080 | today we will discuss both scientific mechanisms

00:02:25.600 | and nomenclature,

00:02:26.520 | and I promise to make all of that clear to you,

00:02:28.440 | even if you don't have a background in biology or psychology,

00:02:31.740 | but we will also, of course, discuss tools,

00:02:34.000 | that is, specific steps that you can take

00:02:35.880 | in order to be more creative.

00:02:37.520 | One particular tool that I'm excited to share with you

00:02:39.920 | involves a meditation,

00:02:41.760 | but this is a very unusual meditation.

00:02:43.760 | This is not sitting with eyes closed,

00:02:45.360 | focusing on your breath or focusing on a chime

00:02:48.560 | or some other feature in your sensory environment

00:02:50.700 | or even in your body.

00:02:52.100 | Later, we will talk about open monitoring meditations.

00:02:55.800 | Open monitoring meditations are very distinct

00:02:58.300 | from other forms of meditation

00:02:59.940 | and involve learning how to sit back

00:03:02.680 | and simply observe your thoughts

00:03:05.180 | while intentionally varying where your thoughts go.

00:03:08.680 | So for those of you that find it a struggle

00:03:11.240 | to focus or to refocus

00:03:13.200 | in more traditional forms of meditation,

00:03:14.940 | or maybe even in your work,

00:03:16.700 | and even for those of you that may suffer

00:03:18.360 | from things like ADHD or similar,

00:03:21.700 | open monitoring meditation can be an extremely valuable tool

00:03:25.160 | for accessing your creative abilities

00:03:27.120 | because of the ways that it allows you

00:03:28.460 | to tap into specific circuits

00:03:30.360 | within the frontal networks of your brain.

00:03:32.040 | So these are networks of the brain

00:03:33.540 | that include the areas just behind your forehead,

00:03:36.600 | and that allow you to evaluate new and novel rule sets

00:03:40.620 | in a very unconstrained way.

00:03:41.960 | Because if you think about it,

00:03:42.960 | creativity is really the ability

00:03:44.720 | to take existing elements from the physical world

00:03:47.720 | or from the thought world, if you will,

00:03:50.140 | or from any domain of life, mood, thinking, and information,

00:03:54.800 | and to reorder those into novel combinations

00:03:57.760 | that are useful for something.

00:03:59.640 | And as we'll also find out later,

00:04:01.200 | creativity has this incredible aspect to it,

00:04:03.800 | which is that when we see or create

00:04:06.760 | or experience something that is truly creative,

00:04:10.240 | it reveals to us something fundamental

00:04:12.620 | about the way that the natural world,

00:04:14.500 | and indeed the way that our brains work.

00:04:17.000 | If that sounds very mysterious and abstract to you now,

00:04:19.240 | I promise that by the end of today's episode,

00:04:21.580 | you will not only understand what that means,

00:04:23.560 | but you will also understand

00:04:24.800 | how to use open monitoring meditations

00:04:26.960 | as well as other forms of tools

00:04:29.400 | in order to access your creative ability.

00:04:31.460 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize

00:04:33.220 | that this podcast is separate

00:04:34.580 | from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:04:36.720 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:04:38.760 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:04:40.640 | about science and science-related tools

00:04:42.680 | to the general public.

00:04:43.960 | In keeping with that theme,

00:04:45.000 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:04:47.680 | Our first sponsor is Roca.

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00:05:01.160 | I've spent a lifetime working on the biology

00:05:02.940 | of the visual system,

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00:05:05.360 | has to contend with an enormous number of challenges

00:05:07.840 | for you to be able to see clearly.

00:05:09.120 | For instance, when you move from a shady area

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00:05:29.340 | I don't even realize that they're on my face.

00:05:31.000 | I wear sunglasses when I drive

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00:05:34.000 | and I wear readers at night.

00:05:35.840 | I do not wear sunglasses when I get my morning sunlight,

00:05:39.100 | which I do every single morning,

00:05:40.560 | as you should be doing also,

00:05:42.520 | as is covered many times on this podcast.

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00:06:15.700 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Thesis.

00:06:18.260 | Thesis makes custom nootropics.

00:06:20.360 | And as you may have heard me say before,

00:06:21.900 | I am not a fan of the word nootropics

00:06:23.840 | because it means smart drugs.

00:06:25.240 | And frankly, there is no neural circuit in the brain

00:06:28.160 | for being quote unquote smart.

00:06:30.120 | There are neural circuits for focus.

00:06:31.600 | There are neural circuits for task switching.

00:06:33.800 | There are neural circuits for today's topic,

00:06:36.240 | which is creativity.

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00:08:52.000 | Let's talk about creativity.

00:08:53.720 | On the face of it, the word creativity and creative acts

00:08:57.440 | might seem somewhat abstract to us.

00:08:59.240 | That is, we know when we see something

00:09:01.620 | that we consider creative,

00:09:03.600 | and we know when we see something that is not creative,

00:09:06.840 | things that aren't creative are things that we see every day.

00:09:09.640 | A car with four tires, for instance,

00:09:11.600 | a bicycle with two tires, not creative.

00:09:15.320 | However, we also see things that are novel,

00:09:18.040 | that are different,

00:09:18.980 | and that we don't really think of as creative.

00:09:20.880 | In fact, they can be downright trivial.

00:09:23.080 | For instance, if I were to take a fish tank

00:09:25.800 | and put wings on it,

00:09:27.760 | that's a novel combination of things,

00:09:30.160 | which is one of the key criteria for an act or an object

00:09:35.600 | or a piece of music that is creative.

00:09:37.920 | And yet neither of us, I believe,

00:09:40.260 | would find it very creative or very interesting

00:09:42.720 | that a fish tank has wings on it.

00:09:44.080 | Why or why not, I should say?

00:09:46.480 | Well, it turns out that for something to be creative,

00:09:49.140 | it actually has to reveal to us something fundamental

00:09:52.040 | about the world or about how we work.

00:09:54.840 | And I must say that oftentimes the most creative

00:09:57.900 | and the most interesting and the most beloved creative acts

00:10:01.640 | reveal to us something fundamental about the world

00:10:03.920 | or the way that we work

00:10:05.080 | in a way that delights and thrills and surprises us,

00:10:08.240 | but that we aren't even aware what that fundamental rule is.

00:10:11.220 | I'll return to this in a few minutes,

00:10:12.680 | but the time being,

00:10:14.820 | let's just build up from first principles,

00:10:17.020 | what constitutes something creative

00:10:18.640 | and what does not constitute something creative.

00:10:22.240 | Creativity is a way of interacting with the world

00:10:25.000 | or combining or recombining things in the world

00:10:27.480 | in a way that appears novel to us and to other people.

00:10:31.760 | My example of a fish tank with wings on it is novel,

00:10:35.600 | but frankly, it's not very creative

00:10:37.440 | and it's not very interesting.

00:10:38.960 | It doesn't reveal anything new to us.

00:10:41.820 | Sure, they're flying fish,

00:10:43.060 | although they just kind of jump far, they don't really fly.

00:10:46.000 | And as a consequence, putting wings on a fish tank

00:10:49.040 | could be used as a metaphor for the fact that fish don't fly

00:10:51.640 | but you already knew and I already knew that fish don't fly.

00:10:54.400 | And so there's nothing novel revealed to us about the world

00:10:57.260 | except something we already knew.

00:10:59.360 | Now, creative acts on the other hand,

00:11:01.680 | of course involve novel combinations of existing rule sets.

00:11:05.820 | That could be different combinations of music or colors

00:11:08.080 | or shapes or technology, et cetera,

00:11:11.260 | but it does so in a way that tells us something fundamental

00:11:16.380 | and different.

00:11:17.380 | Let me give an example of a few truly creative artistic acts

00:11:21.680 | and I'll do that in the domain of visual arts.

00:11:24.520 | But of course, there are many examples that could come

00:11:27.000 | from music or from other domains, sport, et cetera.

00:11:30.160 | Examples I'll give rather than a fish tank with wings

00:11:33.640 | are for instance, the comparison between a drawing

00:11:38.320 | or a very accurate painting of a face,

00:11:41.160 | an Escher painting and a Banksy.

00:11:46.480 | Okay, if you don't know what those are, I'll explain.

00:11:49.360 | First of all, let's talk about

00:11:50.880 | an accurate representation of a face.

00:11:53.300 | If I were to sit you down

00:11:54.620 | or if you were to send me a photograph

00:11:56.360 | and then I were to paint or draw a picture of your face

00:11:59.560 | in a way that faithfully represented the position

00:12:03.160 | and shape of your nose relative to the eyes,

00:12:05.140 | maybe a curl of the lip, maybe a few hairs of your eyebrows

00:12:10.140 | in a particular way that really captured you accurately.

00:12:14.120 | I think most people would say, okay, it's accurate.

00:12:16.920 | It looks a lot like the photograph or the person.

00:12:19.120 | And on the one hand, while that could be interesting,

00:12:22.440 | it's not particularly creative

00:12:23.920 | because it faithfully represents what's already there.

00:12:27.800 | In contrast, a painting or a picture like an Escher,

00:12:31.240 | and for those of you that aren't familiar with Eschers,

00:12:33.860 | involves a lot of repeating patterns.

00:12:35.440 | So for instance, a bird image

00:12:37.240 | that's repeated over and over and over and over again,

00:12:39.620 | sometimes in partially overlapping manner

00:12:42.600 | and perhaps a building that's repeated

00:12:44.880 | over and over and over again,

00:12:46.000 | or stones repeated over and over again,

00:12:47.800 | or staircases over and over again.

00:12:50.240 | Eschers capture elements from the outside world

00:12:54.740 | and faithfully represent them,

00:12:56.340 | but faithfully represent them over and over and over again,

00:12:58.800 | which is not typically seen in the natural world.

00:13:01.000 | In fact, most of what our visual system does

00:13:03.860 | is to eliminate repetitive patterns when we see them.

00:13:06.920 | In fact, most of what our visual system does

00:13:09.000 | is try and make us blind to repetitive patterns

00:13:11.400 | in our visual environment and only allow us to see things

00:13:14.480 | that are unusual in that visual environment.

00:13:17.380 | Now, this is especially true at visual scales.

00:13:21.400 | What I mean by that is if you were to go to the beach

00:13:23.240 | and lie on your towel and look down at the sand,

00:13:25.680 | you would start to notice that the sand

00:13:27.120 | is a very, very repetitive pattern.

00:13:29.120 | So at very small scales,

00:13:30.600 | and in particular at molecular scales,

00:13:32.100 | when you get down to the level of atoms and so forth,

00:13:35.080 | everything is repetitive.

00:13:36.080 | It's the same thing as just reproduced

00:13:37.640 | in different combinations over and over again.

00:13:39.420 | But as we move through our world,

00:13:40.560 | typically we're not looking down at pebbles on the ground

00:13:42.960 | or little grains of sand or the pattern of leaves

00:13:46.680 | in a particular clover or something of that sort.

00:13:49.380 | Most of the time we're looking out on landscapes

00:13:50.980 | or at people's faces, et cetera.

00:13:53.080 | And very seldom do we see highly repetitive patterns

00:13:57.360 | at that scale.

00:13:58.640 | So what Eschers do is they essentially reveal to us

00:14:01.440 | a fundamental feature about the way

00:14:03.320 | that our visual system works,

00:14:04.960 | which is that repetitive patterns tend to become noise

00:14:09.200 | in our visual system.

00:14:10.040 | That is our brain encodes repetition

00:14:12.600 | as things not to be interested in,

00:14:14.600 | and the things that stand out against that repetition

00:14:17.220 | as the things to be interested in,

00:14:18.440 | so-called signal to noise.

00:14:20.600 | What Eschers do is they invert the relationship

00:14:22.900 | between signal and noise,

00:14:24.040 | and they make the repetitive patterns, the signal,

00:14:26.860 | and the unusual patterns, the noise.

00:14:29.520 | In fact, in every Escher, there are unusual patterns,

00:14:31.700 | and those completely disappear to us.

00:14:33.700 | Now, when you look at an Escher,

00:14:34.780 | what you probably see and what I see

00:14:36.580 | are just a bunch of birds repeated over and over again,

00:14:38.460 | or buildings or staircases repeated over and over again.

00:14:41.120 | And you may like Eschers and you may not.

00:14:42.880 | That's not the point.

00:14:43.880 | Today, we're not talking about taste

00:14:45.440 | in particular creative acts.

00:14:47.140 | What we're trying to identify here

00:14:48.840 | are the rules and mechanisms

00:14:50.220 | of what constitutes something creative

00:14:52.080 | and why it's creative.

00:14:53.320 | And the key element here is that what's revealed

00:14:56.000 | by an Escher through these repetition patterns

00:14:59.440 | is an inversion of the way

00:15:00.560 | that our brain normally encodes visual images,

00:15:02.880 | and therefore the rule that repetition is suppressed

00:15:07.480 | in our visual system,

00:15:08.960 | and that unusual visual features are revealed to us,

00:15:13.560 | that rule is what pops out to us when we look at an Escher.

00:15:17.120 | Now, when I say pops out,

00:15:18.240 | I don't mean that you look at an Escher and go,

00:15:19.660 | "Oh, normally I don't see repetition.

00:15:21.480 | "Normally I see the unusual stuff, et cetera, et cetera."

00:15:24.360 | But there seems to be something about truly creative acts

00:15:27.280 | that capture the attention

00:15:28.980 | and sometimes the delight of many, many people

00:15:31.680 | is that they reveal a fundamental rule

00:15:33.920 | about how the brain or the world work.

00:15:36.240 | Let me give you a different example,

00:15:38.360 | also from the visual art world.

00:15:40.200 | Let me give you the example of Banksy.

00:15:42.080 | Banksy is an artist

00:15:43.840 | that many of you are probably familiar with

00:15:45.440 | and probably some of you are not familiar with.

00:15:47.740 | So for those of you that are not familiar with Banksy,

00:15:50.000 | Banksy is an artist that most often

00:15:52.440 | does two-dimensional artwork.

00:15:53.880 | So these would be stencils or paintings or drawings,

00:15:56.700 | like many artists,

00:15:57.920 | and does them in an urban landscape,

00:15:59.880 | an actual city or suburban landscape.

00:16:03.520 | That is, he draws or stencils or graffitis

00:16:06.960 | in a very cryptic way, I should say.

00:16:08.940 | No one really knows who Banksy is or when he does his art,

00:16:11.500 | he just reveals his art by putting it up.

00:16:13.400 | But he does this in the context of cities

00:16:15.880 | and on three-dimensional objects.

00:16:17.500 | So a good example would be,

00:16:19.320 | he will stencil next to a phone booth a police officer,

00:16:23.320 | or he will graffiti next to an actual fire hydrant,

00:16:27.280 | a dog lifting its leg to urinate on that fire hydrant.

00:16:30.680 | Now, what's interesting about Banksy's

00:16:33.280 | is not simply the fact that he puts two-dimensional art

00:16:36.160 | onto three-dimensional surfaces

00:16:38.000 | in the urban and suburban landscape,

00:16:40.360 | because if you think about it,

00:16:41.400 | that's been done many, many times before.

00:16:43.000 | All graffiti is that, all city art and murals is that.

00:16:48.160 | So what's unique about Banksy?

00:16:50.020 | What's unique about Banksy,

00:16:52.320 | or I should say Banksy's, the actual art,

00:16:55.280 | is that he combines two-dimensional art

00:16:58.580 | with a three-dimensional landscape

00:17:00.780 | in a way that the concept pops out at you.

00:17:04.200 | What do I mean by that?

00:17:05.120 | Well, in the case of the dog lifting

00:17:06.640 | its leg to urinate on the fire hydrant,

00:17:08.320 | that's a scene that most people,

00:17:09.760 | and in fact, most children are familiar with from cartoons

00:17:12.160 | or from our basic understanding of the stereotype of dogs.

00:17:14.400 | And I must tell you, having owned a male dog,

00:17:17.120 | a bulldog, Costello, for many years,

00:17:20.160 | hydrants were a particular target for Costello.

00:17:22.720 | Of course, everything was a particular target

00:17:24.440 | for Costello urinating outdoors.

00:17:26.580 | Nonetheless, he liked to pee on fire hydrants.

00:17:29.420 | That itself is not interesting.

00:17:30.960 | Seeing a photograph of a dog raising its leg

00:17:33.600 | to pee on a fire hydrant is not interesting.

00:17:36.240 | Seeing a painting of that isn't interesting.

00:17:39.720 | Seeing an actual dog urinating on a fire hydrant

00:17:42.160 | isn't interesting.

00:17:43.240 | In fact, seeing a painting in two dimensions

00:17:47.000 | of a dog raising its leg to,

00:17:49.520 | of course it can't actually urinate,

00:17:50.880 | but give you the impression that it would urinate

00:17:53.680 | on that fire hydrant isn't particularly interesting

00:17:56.240 | except for the fact that it reveals to us

00:17:58.160 | something fundamental,

00:17:59.460 | which is that we tend to pair visual relationships

00:18:02.680 | between different objects that share a common theme

00:18:06.120 | and then the theme tends to pop out.

00:18:08.080 | So for instance, the dog raising its leg

00:18:09.680 | next to a fire hydrant,

00:18:10.680 | even if the dog is drawn in two dimensions

00:18:12.440 | and the fire hydrant is in three dimensions,

00:18:14.480 | allows the concept of dog and fire hydrant

00:18:17.240 | to emerge or pop out at us,

00:18:19.080 | which reveals to us something fundamental

00:18:20.800 | about how our brain works,

00:18:21.960 | which is that our brain encodes concepts and entire stories

00:18:26.080 | as symbols of interaction between different objects.

00:18:29.880 | Let me give you a different example

00:18:31.040 | just to make sure that this hits home.

00:18:32.980 | One of Banksy's more famous paintings

00:18:36.080 | is a rather politically charged one,

00:18:38.120 | which is of a girl holding a bouquet of balloons

00:18:42.780 | and this two-dimensional drawing was put onto the West wall,

00:18:47.320 | dividing territories in the Middle East,

00:18:50.020 | a very controversial issue.

00:18:51.960 | The controversies of that issue

00:18:53.080 | are not what I want to get into,

00:18:54.140 | but I don't think anyone would doubt

00:18:55.780 | that it is a controversial issue.

00:18:58.220 | The two-dimensional drawing of the girl with the balloons

00:19:01.080 | on the actual wall turns out to be quite interesting

00:19:05.780 | as an art piece because what it reveals to us

00:19:08.580 | is the entire controversy around the presence of that wall

00:19:12.040 | and the desire for certain people to breach that wall

00:19:14.600 | and the desire for other people to insist

00:19:16.680 | that that wall not be breached for whatever reason.

00:19:18.780 | Again, this is not about the particular controversy.

00:19:21.200 | The point is that a two-dimensional image

00:19:23.560 | combined with a three-dimensional structure

00:19:25.980 | allows the purpose of that three-dimensional structure

00:19:30.120 | and the controversy around that three-dimensional structure

00:19:32.680 | to pop out at us in a way that if, for instance,

00:19:36.100 | we had just seen a photograph of somebody

00:19:38.760 | next to that wall or with a ladder,

00:19:40.720 | or if we just seen a drawing of a girl

00:19:44.340 | holding a bouquet of balloons

00:19:45.880 | on a drawing of that wall to not emerge.

00:19:48.400 | In other words, it captures two fundamental features

00:19:50.780 | of the visual system,

00:19:51.620 | our ability to encode things in two dimensions

00:19:53.760 | and understand symbols,

00:19:55.100 | and our ability to understand things in three dimensions.

00:19:57.960 | And in particular, the wall as a three-dimensional object

00:20:00.180 | is really interesting

00:20:01.960 | because it's an actual physical barrier.

00:20:03.960 | So showing it as the actual physical barrier

00:20:06.160 | that it is in real space in three dimensions

00:20:09.200 | turns out to allow the interaction between those two things,

00:20:12.720 | the concept, the controversy, to pop out at us

00:20:16.120 | and make us think about that particular controversy

00:20:18.360 | and perhaps where we each individually stand

00:20:20.440 | on that controversy.

00:20:22.000 | Now, there are many examples

00:20:23.740 | of what I just gave in the visual domain.

00:20:26.120 | For instance, Rothko's, which are just color on canvas,

00:20:30.160 | are a particularly interesting source of information

00:20:33.280 | about the way that the brain encodes color.

00:20:34.980 | Later, I'll fill in exactly what that information is.

00:20:37.640 | You may like Rothko's, you may not,

00:20:39.520 | but I'll tell you one thing.

00:20:40.360 | When you look at a Rothko,

00:20:42.540 | you are seeing colors in a very different way

00:20:45.160 | than you would ever see colors in any other context.

00:20:47.840 | The fact that they don't have a frame, typically,

00:20:50.280 | and the fact that there's no white canvas

00:20:52.720 | allows the colors that you see to be novel hues

00:20:57.000 | of those colors that you will not see in any other context.

00:21:00.280 | And in doing so, reveals to you what your brain does

00:21:04.780 | in order to understand and extract color.

00:21:07.740 | Now, in the context of music, for instance,

00:21:09.780 | you will sometimes hear a street musician play a song,

00:21:13.240 | maybe a Bob Dylan song or Led Zeppelin song

00:21:15.440 | or a Pink Floyd song, pretty closely, pretty accurately

00:21:18.580 | to the way that song is played.

00:21:19.780 | But of course, that's not creative.

00:21:20.840 | That's just like the photograph

00:21:21.940 | or the accurate portrait of somebody's face.

00:21:24.200 | Or you may hear an acoustic version

00:21:25.960 | of what's normally an electric guitar song

00:21:28.060 | or electrical song or vice versa.

00:21:30.700 | Somewhat creative, sometimes sounds even better

00:21:32.860 | than the original, but not particularly creative.

00:21:34.960 | However, each and every one of us

00:21:37.240 | has a particular taste in music.

00:21:38.900 | Maybe it's classical, maybe it's rock, maybe it's punk,

00:21:40.820 | maybe it's hip hop.

00:21:42.540 | Within each of those genres,

00:21:44.300 | I think all of us are familiar with hearing something

00:21:47.480 | for the first time and maybe even every time.

00:21:50.260 | And there's something about the combination

00:21:52.440 | of the words and the music,

00:21:54.500 | or sometimes just the music or just the words,

00:21:56.980 | that allows some feature of it to pop out at us

00:22:00.140 | as particularly exciting.

00:22:02.160 | And when we feel that excitement

00:22:03.620 | and we feel that it's really novel,

00:22:05.240 | it's different than what we've heard before,

00:22:07.180 | I assure you what it's revealing to you

00:22:09.400 | is the way that your auditory system

00:22:11.480 | and often your auditory and your emotional system

00:22:14.140 | encodes information that you hear.

00:22:17.140 | And again, the rule that it's revealing

00:22:19.440 | is not splayed out for you.

00:22:21.540 | For instance, it's not told to you,

00:22:22.940 | oh, this is the way you normally hear

00:22:24.320 | and now you're hearing things differently.

00:22:26.100 | Sometimes it's the change in, for instance,

00:22:27.640 | in the way that words are accented

00:22:29.160 | or the way that sentences are constructed.

00:22:31.240 | This often you'll hear in hip hop,

00:22:32.560 | the way that sentences are constructed can be divided up,

00:22:35.660 | not as normal declarative sentences,

00:22:37.540 | the way that they're typically written,

00:22:38.960 | but the way that sentences are chopped up and fractured

00:22:41.880 | reveals to us new meaning

00:22:43.600 | and in fact enhanced meaning about particular words

00:22:45.920 | that we wouldn't see if it was written out as a paragraph

00:22:48.000 | and then sung as a script

00:22:49.560 | that would be the same as the one that we would read.

00:22:51.640 | Again, the point is that what is exciting and novel to you

00:22:55.460 | is just the way that you hear it,

00:22:57.080 | but it's exciting and novel to you

00:22:58.540 | because there are circuits within the brain

00:23:01.120 | that when we hear or see or feel or experience

00:23:06.120 | known elements in new ways that are truly creative,

00:23:10.880 | the way that those neural circuits function is changed.

00:23:14.800 | And when neural circuits change the way that they function

00:23:17.840 | simply by way of what comes into our eyes, our ears,

00:23:21.140 | and the way that we experience our feelings,

00:23:23.700 | there is the release of chemicals,

00:23:25.200 | including the release of the chemical dopamine

00:23:27.120 | and other neuromodulators as well

00:23:29.200 | that make us feel both surprised, delighted,

00:23:32.060 | and this is very key,

00:23:34.080 | excited in anticipation that we might see it again.

00:23:37.660 | So with the understanding in mind that true creativity

00:23:40.240 | involves the novel combination of some elements,

00:23:43.120 | could be notes of music, could be numbers,

00:23:46.520 | could be visual elements like lines or colors,

00:23:49.220 | could be physical movements, et cetera,

00:23:51.640 | but novel combinations of some things

00:23:54.740 | that reveal to us something fundamental

00:23:57.440 | about the way that our brain and or the world work.

00:24:00.580 | And of course, as I mentioned before,

00:24:02.800 | that fundamental thing may or may not

00:24:04.740 | be consciously accessible to us.

00:24:07.000 | We may not know what exactly it is that's novel to us,

00:24:10.840 | but it feels novel and it feels true.

00:24:14.720 | Well, with that understanding in mind,

00:24:16.420 | we therefore can ask what are the underlying principles

00:24:19.960 | and neural circuits that underlie the creative process?

00:24:23.400 | And the word process here is especially important.

00:24:26.360 | In fact, if there's one thing I'd really like to impress

00:24:28.920 | on everybody is that when thinking about biology,

00:24:32.560 | it's almost always better to think about verbs

00:24:35.300 | as opposed to nouns.

00:24:36.540 | So rather than think of creativity as a noun

00:24:39.240 | or somebody being creative as an adjective,

00:24:41.900 | think about the verb creativity,

00:24:43.520 | that is what are the steps required?

00:24:45.760 | And therefore, what are the cells and circuits and thoughts,

00:24:48.140 | et cetera, required in order to be creative?

00:24:52.220 | This element of thinking about verbs

00:24:55.040 | then allows us to say, okay,

00:24:56.800 | what are the various steps in coming up

00:24:58.600 | with a creative idea, in testing a creative idea,

00:25:01.840 | and then implementing that creative idea?

00:25:04.120 | And in doing so, we find,

00:25:06.120 | based on the scientific literature,

00:25:07.680 | that there are basically three major networks

00:25:09.920 | within the brain, each of which is responsible

00:25:12.200 | for each of the three steps

00:25:14.120 | to arrive at something truly creative.

00:25:16.320 | The first neural circuit involved in creativity

00:25:18.300 | is the so-called executive network.

00:25:20.760 | This is kind of a goofy name because the neural circuits

00:25:23.400 | that I'm about to describe do a bunch of other things

00:25:25.360 | as well, but they certainly control

00:25:27.880 | what are called executive functions.

00:25:29.580 | Executive functions are functions that you and I both have,

00:25:34.100 | which is our ability to govern our thinking

00:25:36.640 | and our behavior in very deliberate ways.

00:25:38.960 | And that is largely accomplished

00:25:41.360 | through the use of the neural circuitry

00:25:43.600 | that sits right behind the forebrain,

00:25:45.120 | the so-called prefrontal cortex.

00:25:46.760 | Now, the prefrontal cortex

00:25:48.520 | involves many different subregions.

00:25:50.600 | It has a bunch of different parts,

00:25:51.900 | just like any country has different states,

00:25:53.620 | et cetera, and provinces.

00:25:54.900 | Executive function involves the prefrontal cortex

00:25:57.960 | and some other neural structures.

00:26:00.020 | But for sake of this discussion,

00:26:01.700 | executive function and the prefrontal cortex

00:26:05.580 | are mainly responsible for suppressing action,

00:26:08.660 | that is, for eliminating choices

00:26:11.700 | among the infinite number of choices that exist,

00:26:14.960 | for instance, of what colors to combine on a painting

00:26:17.220 | or what lines to draw or what notes to play

00:26:19.620 | or what movements to make in a sports endeavor,

00:26:21.640 | what numbers to include in a mathematics endeavor,

00:26:24.600 | or what words and letters and syllables and sentences

00:26:28.280 | to include in writing a creative passage.

00:26:31.100 | The second network is the so-called default mode network.

00:26:35.480 | There's a lot of discussion nowadays

00:26:36.680 | about the default mode network

00:26:38.080 | as it relates to consciousness and meditation, et cetera.

00:26:40.880 | The default mode network does many different things,

00:26:43.420 | but in the context of our discussion about creativity,

00:26:46.040 | the default mode network is really the network

00:26:48.800 | that starts being engaged when you close your eyes

00:26:51.660 | and start paying attention to what's going on

00:26:54.060 | in terms of your thinking

00:26:55.500 | as opposed to the sensory outside world.

00:26:58.220 | And the default mode network is especially important

00:27:01.640 | for what's called spontaneous imagination.

00:27:03.940 | Now, spontaneous imagination

00:27:05.520 | is something that you can try at any moment

00:27:07.140 | if you were to close your eyes

00:27:08.700 | and to try and not pay attention to the sounds around you,

00:27:11.540 | but even if you do,

00:27:12.900 | to just pay attention to whatever thoughts

00:27:17.160 | or feelings emerge when your eyes are closed, okay?

00:27:19.980 | By closing your eyes and shutting yourself off

00:27:21.580 | to the outside sensory world,

00:27:24.080 | you start to engage much more of your brain machinery

00:27:27.320 | dedicated towards what's going on inside you,

00:27:29.700 | so-called interoception,

00:27:30.780 | but also what you're thinking about your thinking,

00:27:33.420 | whether or not your thoughts are complete or incomplete,

00:27:35.980 | whether or not they are fragmentary in a way

00:27:38.060 | that goes from one thought to another

00:27:40.000 | distantly in the past or present to future, et cetera.

00:27:43.000 | Depending on time of day, how well rested you are,

00:27:45.560 | how stressed you are, how happy you are,

00:27:47.640 | the default mode network will take you through a journey

00:27:50.060 | of different types of thoughts,

00:27:51.380 | different types of feelings, et cetera.

00:27:53.080 | The specific types of thoughts and feelings

00:27:55.100 | are not as interesting as the fact

00:27:56.500 | that when you close your eyes,

00:27:57.860 | you're essentially engaging this default mode network,

00:28:00.100 | which is essentially the network associated

00:28:01.700 | with imagination and imagination based on elements

00:28:05.180 | that exist only within your head,

00:28:07.660 | that is within your brain, okay,

00:28:09.900 | and therefore must rely on memory of previous experiences.

00:28:15.100 | As soon as you close your eyes,

00:28:16.040 | you are shutting yourself off from the sensory world.

00:28:18.400 | So by definition, you can no longer be bringing in

00:28:21.140 | novel experiences in that moment.

00:28:23.180 | You're relying on your library of existing experiences

00:28:26.280 | and your memory of those in order to imagine new things,

00:28:29.480 | and you're doing this in a very, in a free associative way.

00:28:32.080 | You're not trying to imagine new things.

00:28:33.500 | It's just whatever geysers to the surface, okay?

00:28:35.540 | So we've got the executive network,

00:28:37.260 | which is involved in suppressing

00:28:39.040 | particular thoughts or actions.

00:28:41.180 | We have the default mode network,

00:28:43.140 | which is involved in imagination,

00:28:44.700 | and the default mode network I should mention

00:28:46.660 | also involves a sub-region of the prefrontal cortex.

00:28:48.860 | It's called the medial prefrontal cortex,

00:28:50.340 | but other brain regions as well,

00:28:52.700 | and then the final element within the circuits

00:28:54.960 | underlying creativity is the so-called salience network.

00:28:57.340 | The salience network is a network of brain regions

00:29:01.300 | that involves areas such as the insula,

00:29:03.500 | which actually has a complete map of your body surface,

00:29:05.700 | as well as some information mapped there

00:29:08.000 | about what's going on in the outside world

00:29:09.660 | and how those combine with what's going on

00:29:11.260 | in your internal landscape that is within your body.

00:29:13.780 | Also a brain region called the ACC,

00:29:15.540 | or excuse me, anterior cingulate cortex, and the amygdala.

00:29:20.060 | So a lot of information is mapped

00:29:21.520 | within the salience network about how we feel

00:29:24.200 | and how we feel in relation to things

00:29:25.900 | that are happening around us and within us.

00:29:27.980 | And the salience network has one main job,

00:29:30.820 | which is to pay attention to what's most interesting

00:29:33.780 | either in the world or inside us

00:29:37.020 | in terms of feelings or experiences, okay?

00:29:39.580 | So we've got three networks, executive network,

00:29:42.180 | which is there to suppress choices

00:29:44.860 | in terms of actions we could take, but decide not to,

00:29:47.940 | or things we could think about,

00:29:49.380 | but choose not to or try not to.

00:29:51.340 | The default mode network,

00:29:52.720 | which is basically the catalog or library

00:29:55.900 | of previous experiences that we have available to us

00:29:59.240 | that would act as sort of the paints on a pallet

00:30:02.440 | or the possible ingredients that could go into a recipe.

00:30:06.560 | All of that has to, again, arise from previous experience,

00:30:09.260 | right, we can't close our eyes

00:30:10.820 | and suddenly be able to access all the melodies

00:30:13.940 | that we've never heard before,

00:30:15.540 | or all our ideas and concepts and knowledge about music

00:30:18.940 | if we don't have musical understanding

00:30:20.660 | or visual understanding.

00:30:22.060 | So we're really drawing up the library

00:30:24.180 | and that library tends to be rather disorganized,

00:30:26.620 | it kind of swirls around, it's not very structured

00:30:29.740 | unless we're actively trying to think about something.

00:30:32.300 | And then we have the salience network,

00:30:34.280 | which is the networks within the brain

00:30:36.300 | that decide or make choices about what's most interesting

00:30:39.020 | to pay attention to in a given moment.

00:30:41.260 | Okay, so those three networks work together

00:30:43.640 | to create things.

00:30:45.260 | And when I say create things,

00:30:46.900 | we again have to really underscore

00:30:49.340 | our definition of creativity.

00:30:50.740 | Creativity is a rearrangement of existing elements

00:30:54.700 | into novel combinations that reveal something fundamental

00:30:57.640 | about how we or the world works.

00:31:00.440 | And this is very important,

00:31:02.780 | it tends to be things that are useful.

00:31:06.080 | Now they can merely be useful because they're entertaining

00:31:08.620 | or thrilling, they can also have a particular utility

00:31:11.360 | or use in the world like a piece of technology

00:31:13.500 | that is actually useful like an app or a smartphone

00:31:16.980 | or a computer actually has utility or a vehicle.

00:31:20.300 | There are creative acts that led to the formation

00:31:23.300 | of vehicles and computers, et cetera.

00:31:25.420 | But the point is that just merely coming up

00:31:28.420 | with novel combinations of things like wings on a fish tank,

00:31:31.340 | that's not creative or it's not creative

00:31:33.540 | in any kind of meaningful way because it's simply not useful.

00:31:37.560 | It doesn't reveal anything fundamental, new or purposeful.

00:31:41.360 | It doesn't allow us to think about or interact

00:31:43.740 | with the world or ourselves in novel ways.

00:31:45.780 | Whereas things, people, actions and ideas

00:31:50.700 | that are truly creative really changed the way

00:31:53.340 | that we are able to access the world.

00:31:54.900 | They act as portals to the world and to ourselves.

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00:33:12.960 | So now you have some idea about the brain areas

00:33:15.040 | and networks involved in creativity,

00:33:17.600 | but I want to be very clear that anytime we talk

00:33:19.800 | about mechanisms and brain areas,

00:33:21.560 | what's far more important than the names

00:33:23.480 | of those brain areas is an understanding of what they do.

00:33:25.800 | So if you couldn't remember the anterior cingulate cortex

00:33:28.520 | or the fact that the prefrontal cortex is involved

00:33:30.520 | in executive function, et cetera, that's fine.

00:33:33.680 | It's less important that you know the names of things

00:33:35.740 | than you understand the action steps that those things take.

00:33:38.800 | That is the verb actions

00:33:40.440 | that those particular brain areas engage

00:33:42.540 | in order to arrive at a particular end point.

00:33:44.360 | And the end point we're talking about today is creativity.

00:33:47.540 | I want to discuss creativity

00:33:50.080 | in terms of what actually goes into being creative.

00:33:53.080 | And it turns out there are just two elements

00:33:55.040 | and those two elements are now well understood

00:33:56.920 | from the perspective of psychology.

00:33:58.540 | And fortunately, the neuroscience well supports

00:34:02.140 | what the psychology says and vice versa.

00:34:04.540 | And those two elements that go into coming up

00:34:07.440 | with a creative idea and then implementing

00:34:10.140 | or developing that creative idea into something real

00:34:12.820 | that you and the rest of the world can experience

00:34:15.700 | are divergent thinking and convergent thinking.

00:34:19.020 | And divergent thinking and convergent thinking

00:34:21.900 | are very straightforward to understand.

00:34:24.700 | Divergent thinking is taking some known object

00:34:29.300 | or event in the world or sport or concept.

00:34:34.400 | It could be running, it could be a musical note,

00:34:36.940 | it could be jumping, it could be a particular color

00:34:40.860 | on a piece of paper and asking yourself

00:34:44.500 | how many different things could that thing actually be?

00:34:49.180 | You might say, well, running is running,

00:34:51.180 | but let's use divergent thinking as a way

00:34:53.580 | to illustrate what divergent thinking is.

00:34:55.780 | If I show you a picture of somebody running,

00:34:57.580 | I say, what do you see?

00:34:58.480 | And you say, I see somebody running.

00:35:00.340 | And then I might give you a divergent thinking task

00:35:03.140 | and these tasks are the same ones used

00:35:05.000 | in various experiments.

00:35:06.220 | And I'd say, how many different things can you think about

00:35:09.780 | based on this picture that you see of somebody running?

00:35:13.000 | Now, if you are able to engage divergent thinking,

00:35:15.880 | you could say, running to the store,

00:35:18.640 | running away from a lion, running towards somebody I love,

00:35:22.780 | or maybe you have a more elaborate imagination

00:35:25.860 | and you could say, running in front of a bus to grab a kid

00:35:30.200 | so the kid doesn't get hit by the bus

00:35:32.180 | or running toward a concert

00:35:33.780 | because I'm so excited about the particular concert

00:35:35.980 | and then it starts to spool into a story.

00:35:37.700 | In other words, divergent thinking involves taking

00:35:40.780 | one simple, what we would call in neuroscience

00:35:43.540 | or psychology, stimulus, one image or sound, et cetera,

00:35:47.180 | and trying to radiate out from that

00:35:49.180 | as many different divergent situations, properties,

00:35:54.180 | characteristics, events, things

00:35:59.340 | from that one specific element.

00:36:01.060 | So any divergent thinking task would involve exactly that.

00:36:03.820 | I'd show you pictures or play you sounds or words or notes

00:36:08.040 | or describe to you events in history

00:36:11.340 | and try and see how many things can radiate out from that

00:36:14.540 | into diverse, diverse, even distant types of concepts

00:36:19.540 | and pictures, okay?

00:36:20.500 | So that's divergent thinking.

00:36:22.080 | Divergent thinking is really the process

00:36:23.900 | that underlies idea generation.

00:36:26.300 | And the basis of divergent thinking

00:36:29.340 | is that more than one idea is correct.

00:36:32.140 | In fact, the more ideas that you have about one thing,

00:36:35.600 | the better your divergent thinking.

00:36:37.660 | So if I were to give you three minutes

00:36:40.060 | to list off all the things you can think about

00:36:41.940 | related to this pen that I'm holding up,

00:36:44.580 | for those of you listening,

00:36:45.420 | I'm just holding up a pen in front of me,

00:36:47.160 | and you would just write them out or say them out

00:36:48.980 | over the next three minutes,

00:36:50.320 | that would be an example of divergent thinking.

00:36:52.460 | However, if you just said black pen, red pen, white pen,

00:36:55.680 | green pen, et cetera, that's not very divergent thinking.

00:36:57.900 | It's only divergent in the context of color space.

00:37:00.900 | And when I say space, that's just a kind of nerd speak

00:37:03.440 | for one particular domain of thinking.

00:37:05.800 | Whereas if you said red pen, white pen, essay,

00:37:11.080 | pen in a door to hold the door open

00:37:14.080 | so that someone can return to a building,

00:37:15.880 | and you started spooling off a story related to that

00:37:18.200 | and why that was important, well, there you go.

00:37:20.360 | Divergent thinking is essentially taking one element

00:37:23.240 | and coming up with many, many answers.

00:37:25.120 | And in the context of divergent thinking, any answer goes,

00:37:28.120 | but as we'll soon learn,

00:37:29.320 | not every answer is interesting and relevant.

00:37:32.120 | That is not every answer helps solve something

00:37:35.320 | or reveal something fundamental,

00:37:36.600 | and therefore not every divergent answer is truly creative.

00:37:40.800 | The other aspect of divergent thinking

00:37:42.240 | that's really important to understand

00:37:44.000 | is that the selection criteria are extremely vague and vast.

00:37:49.000 | That is, there are no constraints on what you come up with.

00:37:51.720 | So if I hold up this pen and you say orangutan,

00:37:54.960 | that's a perfectly valid divergent idea from this pen

00:37:59.520 | because you thought of it and it's distantly related.

00:38:01.680 | However, we have to remember our earlier rule.

00:38:05.520 | If black pen and orangutan are not linked up in our brain

00:38:10.520 | and the observer's brain in any kind of meaningful way,

00:38:13.780 | it's only interesting to you

00:38:15.560 | because you are the only one that understands the rule

00:38:18.240 | that underlies the link between this pen and orangutan.

00:38:22.420 | Whereas if you come up with something different

00:38:25.240 | that somehow tells me and everybody else

00:38:27.380 | something interesting about pens or orangutans,

00:38:29.540 | now that's a truly creative idea.

00:38:31.560 | I don't have such an example in mind,

00:38:33.560 | but later I'll give you some examples

00:38:34.920 | of how you can actually march down the path

00:38:36.600 | of divergent thinking and use that executive network

00:38:39.680 | to suppress certain options, to cross off certain answers.

00:38:43.040 | 'Cause again, any answer's valid,

00:38:45.160 | but not all valid answers are interesting or useful.

00:38:48.720 | And you can cross those off and arrive

00:38:50.480 | at the most interesting and truly creative answer.

00:38:53.320 | A couple more things about divergent thinking.

00:38:56.380 | Divergent thinking largely taps

00:38:58.200 | into the networks of the brain

00:38:59.680 | that are involved in mental flexibility.

00:39:02.500 | So this is a different aspect of our prefrontal cortex,

00:39:05.620 | which is not based on executive function

00:39:07.720 | and our ability to reduce options,

00:39:11.600 | but rather areas of the prefrontal cortex

00:39:14.400 | that are available to generate multiple options

00:39:17.260 | and actually suppress context, right?

00:39:19.520 | To forget that pens are just for writing, for instance,

00:39:22.120 | and that pens can do other things like hold the door open.

00:39:24.560 | It's really kind of an unusual use of a pen.

00:39:27.340 | Again, none of these examples that I'm giving

00:39:28.820 | are particularly interesting.

00:39:30.160 | They're just designed to get you to understand

00:39:32.100 | the underlying concept of divergent thinking.

00:39:34.720 | And then the last thing that I'd like you to know

00:39:36.160 | about divergent thinking is that divergent thinking

00:39:39.360 | involves a sort of exploration.

00:39:41.720 | It's a wandering through of ideas that you already had

00:39:45.680 | in your library, in your memory banks about pens

00:39:49.760 | and what pens could be related to

00:39:52.200 | and what pens ought not to be related to.

00:39:55.020 | So again, what's really important about creativity

00:39:57.620 | is that there has to be the basic building blocks

00:40:00.660 | already existing within us.

00:40:02.160 | This is why it's so important to understand

00:40:04.640 | that if you are somebody who really seeks to be creative,

00:40:07.720 | you really do need to be somebody who forages for information

00:40:11.200 | and structured information in particular,

00:40:14.160 | if you are to be creative.

00:40:15.760 | The architect simply can't come up with incredible drawings

00:40:19.920 | or plans for buildings without understanding how buildings

00:40:22.760 | are put together in the various rules that govern buildings.

00:40:25.880 | In other words, you can't break rules

00:40:27.300 | that you don't understand.

00:40:28.720 | I think in movies, especially, we have this idea in mind

00:40:33.020 | that of this limitless concept

00:40:35.420 | or that we have these hidden geniuses

00:40:37.780 | that somehow have access to all the math knowledge

00:40:41.580 | without ever having done any formal math.

00:40:43.240 | Actually, I was flying back from Texas recently

00:40:45.800 | and "Good Will Hunting" was on somebody's screen.

00:40:47.740 | I don't tend to watch movies on the plane very often,

00:40:49.760 | sometimes, but not often.

00:40:51.320 | And I was remembering in that movie,

00:40:52.760 | you've got this math genius who is a janitor at MIT, et cetera

00:40:58.100 | and apparently just has access to all this knowledge.

00:41:00.800 | It's a wonderful concept, a very, very,

00:41:04.080 | I would say even exceedingly rare thing

00:41:06.760 | to occur in the world.

00:41:08.000 | Sure, there are people who seem to have a natural talent

00:41:10.360 | for mathematics or for something else,

00:41:12.280 | but this idea that there are incredible geniuses among us

00:41:16.960 | that just spontaneously have so much knowledge,

00:41:19.520 | that's by far the exception rather than the rule, of course,

00:41:23.320 | and may not even actually exist.

00:41:25.380 | I'm sure someone will put in the comments examples

00:41:27.040 | where this actually exists.

00:41:28.100 | More often than not, what you find is that people

00:41:29.940 | who have extreme virtuosity in a given area

00:41:33.400 | put many, many years into developing the basic substrates,

00:41:37.580 | the basic building blocks of whatever it is

00:41:39.640 | their craft happens to be where they demonstrate virtuosity.

00:41:42.200 | So this is very important to understand.

00:41:43.880 | Nonetheless, divergent thinking is the critical element

00:41:48.880 | for initiating the creative process.

00:41:51.480 | Again, thinking about creativity as a verb.

00:41:53.680 | And divergent thinking involves taking some starting point,

00:41:57.840 | in this case, a pen, and then radiating out from that

00:42:00.520 | in a fairly unconstrained,

00:42:02.360 | what biologists call a random walk,

00:42:04.240 | just kind of wandering through your thought space

00:42:06.740 | and memory space about what could be related to this pen.

00:42:09.480 | Now, on the flip side of creativity is the implementation

00:42:12.240 | of specific combinations of things and testing those

00:42:16.580 | to see whether or not they are interesting, relevant,

00:42:19.240 | or delight us or other people or scare us or other people

00:42:23.160 | or thrill us or other people.

00:42:24.640 | In other words, a testing of whether or not

00:42:27.520 | there's some fundamental rule to emerge.

00:42:30.440 | Again, I'm going to repeat this many, many times

00:42:32.840 | throughout this episode,

00:42:33.680 | and I'm not going to apologize for that

00:42:35.040 | because I think it's so important to understand

00:42:36.500 | that creativity is not just novel combinations.

00:42:38.880 | They're novel combinations of things

00:42:40.840 | that reveal something fundamental

00:42:42.600 | and that often pop out to us, if not every time,

00:42:46.440 | certainly most of the time that we see that thing.

00:42:48.740 | It almost never seems to be the case

00:42:50.840 | that something truly creative dulls in its expression.

00:42:54.080 | And that's because what it's repeating to us

00:42:56.420 | over and over again is this fundamental rule

00:42:58.320 | that normally we can't see or hear or experience

00:43:01.080 | in the absence of this creative act.

00:43:03.760 | So the second part of creativity where things are tested

00:43:07.880 | and where truly creative elements are discovered

00:43:10.920 | is in convergent thinking.

00:43:12.480 | And convergent thinking is, as the name suggests,

00:43:14.580 | just the opposite of divergent thinking.

00:43:16.320 | Convergent thinking would be, for example,

00:43:19.300 | if I give you an image or I tell you the following things,

00:43:21.680 | I say wing, water, and engine.

00:43:26.440 | The concept that I happen to have in mind

00:43:29.540 | is that of a plane that can land on water, right?

00:43:33.740 | Most planes don't land on water

00:43:35.600 | or not intended to land on water.

00:43:37.900 | One would hope that their plane doesn't land on water

00:43:40.080 | unless it's a plane designed to land on water.

00:43:42.340 | But in this case, a plane that can land on water

00:43:45.760 | is one of the very few answers

00:43:48.700 | that can combine wing, water, and engine, right?

00:43:53.700 | I'm sure there are other answers.

00:43:55.100 | There are other convergent thinking modes

00:43:57.320 | that can take you to an answer that would be valid,

00:43:59.840 | but there are not many.

00:44:01.080 | And here, what's really most important

00:44:02.640 | is that I'm not asking you to spool out

00:44:04.760 | or to radiate out from these three things.

00:44:07.760 | Rather, I'm asking you to combine them in some way

00:44:09.940 | that makes sense in the real world.

00:44:12.280 | And indeed, there are planes that can land on water

00:44:15.120 | and wing, water, and engine combined within those things.

00:44:19.460 | They are fundamental features.

00:44:20.860 | They are in fact necessary, but not sufficient,

00:44:23.920 | for having a plane that can land on water.

00:44:26.300 | Okay, so that's just one example of convergent thinking.

00:44:28.220 | And a convergent thinking task

00:44:30.120 | would involve you being given a list of two or three

00:44:33.240 | or maybe even five different things,

00:44:34.560 | and then for each of those

00:44:35.400 | two or three or five different things,

00:44:36.900 | as quickly as you can to come up with a single answer

00:44:39.440 | that binds all of those in a real world concept

00:44:42.380 | that obey the laws of nature or physics in some way.

00:44:45.880 | For instance, you could just come up with some answer

00:44:48.800 | that said a bird that swallowed an engine

00:44:53.220 | and that happens to be a seabird.

00:44:54.880 | You could come up with that,

00:44:56.200 | but that actually is not something that happens

00:44:58.640 | or is very typical at all.

00:45:00.440 | And so it seems like kind of a mishmash of things

00:45:03.060 | that are really just designed

00:45:04.320 | for you to try and accomplish an answer

00:45:06.000 | rather than something real,

00:45:07.300 | such as a plane that lands on water.

00:45:09.000 | Okay, the point here is that divergent thinking

00:45:12.620 | is one aspect of our cognition, of our thinking,

00:45:16.140 | and convergent thinking is a very distinct aspect

00:45:19.680 | of our cognition.

00:45:21.020 | In fact, one of the critical requirements

00:45:23.580 | for convergent thinking is also to access our memory banks

00:45:26.900 | and our understanding about the outside world,

00:45:28.620 | just as it were with divergent thinking,

00:45:31.100 | but it requires more focus and more persistence.

00:45:35.140 | In fact, if we were to come up with a key rule

00:45:37.540 | for divergent thinking, it would be,

00:45:39.200 | you almost want to have just enough focus

00:45:41.360 | to remember what the initial object or thing

00:45:44.260 | that was mentioned was to keep that in mind

00:45:47.260 | so that your answers don't become completely random.

00:45:49.760 | But the more distant and everywhere in between

00:45:53.140 | that you can generate answers,

00:45:54.460 | that is the things that are very close to pens,

00:45:57.700 | black pen, red pen versus pen and doorstop,

00:46:01.480 | pen acting as a doorstop,

00:46:04.260 | one is very close, red pen is very close to black pen,

00:46:08.520 | doorstop is pretty far from black pen.

00:46:11.260 | So that's the idea is that you want to explore

00:46:13.780 | and undergo a range of exploration of different ideas.

00:46:16.500 | Whereas with convergent thinking,

00:46:17.940 | you're really trying to bind these things together.

00:46:20.100 | And so the key element for convergent thinking

00:46:23.760 | is the aspect of persistence and focus.

00:46:27.220 | And that's why convergent thinking in many ways

00:46:30.180 | feels harder than divergent thinking.

00:46:32.540 | It feels like there's an answer

00:46:33.940 | and I want to get the answer right and I can't solve it.

00:46:35.660 | It's a puzzle and it's a puzzle

00:46:37.660 | that relies on very distinct brain circuits

00:46:40.040 | from divergent thinking.

00:46:41.140 | Which brain circuits?

00:46:42.460 | Well, that's what we're going to describe next.

00:46:44.400 | And again, this is not just going to be a list

00:46:46.160 | of different brain circuits with different names

00:46:48.500 | doing different things.

00:46:49.340 | That wouldn't be useful to you or to me.

00:46:51.620 | Rather, what you're about to learn is truly incredible.

00:46:55.880 | What it is is we're going to talk about one single molecule,

00:46:59.580 | dopamine, which is a molecule most typically associated

00:47:03.080 | with motivation and desire and drive

00:47:05.060 | and feelings of pleasure in some cases,

00:47:07.120 | but that actually resides

00:47:08.500 | within four different networks in the brain.

00:47:11.320 | Today, we're going to talk about two of those networks.

00:47:14.060 | And dopamine acting in one network

00:47:16.740 | directly underlies divergent thinking.

00:47:21.000 | Whereas dopamine in another brain network

00:47:23.380 | underlies convergent thinking.

00:47:25.580 | And if at this point in this episode, you're thinking,

00:47:27.860 | okay, when am I going to get the tools

00:47:29.140 | to understand creativity and how to be creative?

00:47:31.640 | What I can assure you is that if you understand

00:47:33.380 | divergent thinking, which hopefully now you do,

00:47:35.380 | and you can understand what convergent thinking is,

00:47:38.460 | and you can understand that dopamine is responsible

00:47:42.320 | for both divergent thinking and convergent thinking,

00:47:45.460 | but through separate pathways.

00:47:47.420 | Well, then if you can understand

00:47:48.740 | how those two separate pathways work

00:47:50.400 | and how to engage them differentially,

00:47:53.200 | therein lie the tools that you can use both to explore ideas,

00:47:58.000 | in other words, find what it is that could be creative,

00:48:01.480 | and then systematically test each of those ideas

00:48:04.860 | for what is truly creative.

00:48:06.340 | That is what meets the criteria

00:48:08.060 | for something that is novel and truly useful

00:48:10.580 | and informs us about something

00:48:12.220 | that we've never seen, heard, or felt before.

00:48:15.080 | Let's just take a moment to talk about

00:48:16.620 | the incredible molecule that is dopamine.

00:48:19.580 | Many people are familiar with dopamine

00:48:21.240 | from the concept of quote unquote dopamine hits,

00:48:24.500 | which is popular language describing

00:48:27.760 | the feeling of pleasure that we get

00:48:29.260 | from pretty much anything that we like

00:48:32.280 | or that we continue to engage in repeatedly.

00:48:34.380 | So some people will talk about the dopamine hit

00:48:36.020 | that they get from somebody attractive

00:48:38.460 | that they like texting them back,

00:48:39.940 | or the dopamine hit that they get from social media,

00:48:42.580 | or the dopamine hit that they get from sugar,

00:48:44.380 | or the dopamine hit that they get from this or from that.

00:48:47.180 | To be honest, the concept of dopamine hits

00:48:49.740 | is not one that I favor because in general,

00:48:52.480 | whenever people talk about dopamine hits,

00:48:54.060 | typically they're talking about activities

00:48:55.700 | such as social media, which dopamine may be involved

00:48:59.640 | at some level, but often it's the case

00:49:02.640 | that the behavior associated with that thing,

00:49:04.800 | in this case, social media, is more of the compulsive nature

00:49:08.100 | rather than an active seeking of something

00:49:11.020 | with positive anticipation.

00:49:12.460 | And that's really what dopamine is about,

00:49:14.460 | at least in the context of one of its major functions

00:49:16.720 | in the brain.

00:49:17.560 | Dopamine is really about motivation and desire and movement.

00:49:22.420 | And it makes sense why motivation, desire, and movement

00:49:24.620 | would be linked up through a common,

00:49:27.240 | in this case, neuromodulator or chemical like dopamine.

00:49:30.340 | Because throughout evolution, if we were excited for

00:49:34.420 | or motivated to pursue something,

00:49:36.980 | we had to move in order to get it, to obtain it.

00:49:40.000 | And in general, we can frame dopamine under the umbrella

00:49:42.460 | of dopamine tends to be involved in neural circuits

00:49:44.740 | in the brain that are involved in processes

00:49:47.160 | that are taking us beyond the confines of our skin.

00:49:50.860 | That is, that motivate us to go do something

00:49:53.260 | in terms of action in the world.

00:49:55.180 | Now, that statement might seem distantly placed

00:49:58.560 | from a discussion about creativity,

00:50:00.340 | but as we'll learn a little bit later,

00:50:01.900 | one of the most useful tools for engaging creativity

00:50:06.220 | and becoming more creative is to think about action elements

00:50:10.540 | within a narrative.

00:50:11.380 | That is, things that we and others can do

00:50:13.760 | in order to discover new rules through actual movement.

00:50:17.820 | That's a little bit cryptic, forgive me,

00:50:20.060 | but I promise I'll return to it later

00:50:21.420 | and I will make it crystal clear.

00:50:23.500 | There are four major circuits in the brain that use dopamine.

00:50:27.860 | Although I should mention,

00:50:29.300 | there are additional circuits as well.

00:50:30.780 | In fact, your eye even contains neurons

00:50:33.020 | that release dopamine that control the sensitivity

00:50:35.000 | of your eye at different times of day, to light, et cetera.

00:50:38.460 | The four major circuits in the brain

00:50:39.700 | that utilize dopamine however,

00:50:41.080 | are used for four major purposes.

00:50:43.460 | And I'll describe what those are.

00:50:44.940 | First of all, is a neural circuit that uses dopamine

00:50:48.340 | among other things, but certainly relies on dopamine

00:50:50.620 | in a critical way to engage movement,

00:50:53.480 | including eye movements.

00:50:54.940 | And we will return to eye movements

00:50:56.300 | and why they're so important for understanding creativity

00:50:59.100 | and maybe even for generating creativity a little bit later.

00:51:02.380 | The name of the circuit, again,

00:51:03.780 | is less important than what it does,

00:51:05.820 | but the name of this circuit, for those that want to know,

00:51:08.540 | is the so-called nigrostriatal pathway, okay?

00:51:11.460 | The substantia nigra is a brain area that is very dark,

00:51:14.960 | that projects to an area called the dorsal striatum.

00:51:17.940 | It contains a bunch of sub regions.

00:51:19.260 | So again, for those of you that really geek out

00:51:20.900 | on this stuff, great.

00:51:22.140 | You can learn these names and retain them in your memory.

00:51:24.700 | If you don't care about names, don't worry about it,

00:51:26.760 | just discard the names.

00:51:28.040 | But areas of the brain like the caudate and putatum

00:51:30.180 | and the dorsal striatum receive input

00:51:32.060 | from the substantia nigra.

00:51:33.900 | In neuroanatomy, when we name something,

00:51:36.500 | we say the origin of that thing and where it connects through.

00:51:40.540 | So nigrostriatal tells you that there is a connection

00:51:43.620 | between the substantia nigra,

00:51:44.980 | 'cause it came first, nigrostriatal,

00:51:46.620 | and then striatal is where it ends up.

00:51:48.380 | So nigrostriatal pathway is involved

00:51:50.200 | in generating bodily movements,

00:51:52.340 | it's involved in eye movements,

00:51:54.740 | and it is actually a brain area that's engaged

00:51:57.700 | when you think about movement.

00:52:00.020 | You can just have a story in your mind about walking

00:52:02.060 | or a story in your mind about running

00:52:03.860 | or a story in your mind about driving.

00:52:05.380 | This area is engaged, very interesting brain area.

00:52:08.740 | And so that's the first circuit,

00:52:10.140 | very important to understand.

00:52:11.300 | And I'll tell you right now, that is the brain circuit

00:52:13.940 | that is engaged when you undergo divergent thinking.

00:52:18.940 | Now, that itself should be interesting, right?

00:52:21.320 | Even if you don't remember any of the names

00:52:22.840 | of the things I just told you,

00:52:24.180 | that you have a brain circuit

00:52:25.200 | that even if you just think about walking,

00:52:27.740 | it becomes more active,

00:52:28.900 | and the dopamine is involved in that brain activity.

00:52:31.880 | And if you recall, divergent thinking involves

00:52:34.460 | taking a concept as boring as a pen

00:52:38.740 | and thinking about other concepts

00:52:41.540 | that could link up with that pen in some sort of way,

00:52:43.840 | logical or illogical, right?

00:52:45.620 | The bridge could be completely abstract

00:52:47.720 | and really fantastical with a bunch of different ideas

00:52:51.160 | in between, like a pen acting as a doorstop

00:52:53.580 | because of some situation where you need to run downstairs

00:52:55.720 | in a fire and get back upstairs quickly

00:52:57.320 | to rescue somebody very divergent

00:52:59.480 | or as divergent as black pen to red pen.

00:53:02.200 | But what's amazing is that that same circuit

00:53:05.640 | is the one that's involved in physical movement,

00:53:08.480 | in generating and thinking about physical movement.

00:53:10.860 | That turns out to be vitally important

00:53:12.900 | for tapping into the creativity process.

00:53:14.980 | So really frame that up in your mind

00:53:16.520 | or commit it to memory.

00:53:17.720 | Now, the second dopamine circuit associated with creativity

00:53:20.400 | is the one associated with convergent thinking,

00:53:23.180 | which again is the kind of thinking

00:53:24.300 | where there's a specific correct answer.

00:53:26.660 | It requires focus and it requires persistence.

00:53:29.340 | And the name of that circuit,

00:53:30.860 | again, the name isn't as important as what it does,

00:53:32.820 | but the name of that circuit is the mesocortical pathway.

00:53:37.520 | The mesocortical pathway is involved in motivation

00:53:41.140 | and it has an emotional component too.

00:53:44.140 | Now, we come clear in a few minutes

00:53:45.780 | why that emotional component is vital,

00:53:48.100 | but this is a circuit that originates in a brain structure

00:53:50.220 | called the lateral ventral tegmental area.

00:53:53.120 | Again, a bunch of words, you can remember it if you want,

00:53:55.480 | lateral ventral tegmental area,

00:53:57.720 | or you can not worry about the name.

00:53:59.460 | And it connects to the prefrontal cortex,

00:54:01.320 | that area just behind the forehead.

00:54:03.260 | And this mesocortical area is involved in motivation

00:54:05.940 | and emotion and is critical for focus and persistence.

00:54:09.440 | It is distinct from a very nearby area,

00:54:11.860 | just sitting right next door,

00:54:13.560 | the so-called mesolimbic area,

00:54:16.240 | which is involved in desire and feelings of reward.

00:54:19.960 | And this is the area that is associated more typically

00:54:22.360 | with addictive behaviors or compulsive behaviors.

00:54:26.520 | We're going to leave out the discussion

00:54:27.900 | about the mesolimbic pathway for now,

00:54:29.880 | because it's not critical

00:54:31.640 | to divergent or convergent thinking,

00:54:34.040 | and it's not critical to the process of creativity,

00:54:36.980 | at least as far as we know.

00:54:38.840 | But I mention it because it is the third

00:54:40.260 | in the four dopaminergic circuits.

00:54:41.800 | And then the fourth circuit,

00:54:43.480 | certainly one I've never talked about before

00:54:44.880 | in this podcast,

00:54:46.440 | which is doesn't mean anything

00:54:48.320 | except that we haven't gotten to it yet,

00:54:49.920 | is the tuberoinfundibular pathway.

00:54:53.380 | And that is the pathway associated with dopamine

00:54:55.560 | and your pituitary gland and the release of hormones

00:54:58.920 | in particular that travel to the ovary.

00:55:01.080 | If you have ovaries or to your testes,

00:55:02.560 | if you have testes and trigger the release

00:55:04.240 | of things like estrogen and testosterone, et cetera,

00:55:07.320 | dopamine is intimately involved in that circuitry.

00:55:11.080 | Again, not the topic of today's discussion.

00:55:13.560 | For today's discussion,

00:55:14.600 | we want to remember that there's a dopamine circuit

00:55:16.760 | called the nigrostriatal circuit,

00:55:18.160 | which is involved in movement and divergent thinking.

00:55:22.520 | And that alone should set a flag up for you.

00:55:24.920 | Like, wow, just thinking about new ideas

00:55:27.320 | has something to do with movement,

00:55:29.000 | with physical movement.

00:55:30.360 | And the dopamine circuit that is the mesocortical pathway,

00:55:35.960 | which is the one that's associated

00:55:37.720 | with motivation and emotion.

00:55:39.400 | And that's the one required for persistence and focus

00:55:42.000 | for convergent thinking.

00:55:43.440 | Why am I telling you all of this about dopamine?

00:55:46.400 | Well, it turns out that dopamine

00:55:49.100 | creates a certain number of responses in the brain and body

00:55:53.900 | when it is active in one or the other of these circuits.

00:55:57.000 | And just for sake of simplicity,

00:55:58.760 | so I don't have to keep saying nigrostriatal

00:56:01.140 | and mesocortical, here going forward,

00:56:04.960 | I'm going to talk about the dopamine circuit

00:56:07.280 | that's associated with divergent thinking

00:56:09.440 | or the dopamine circuit associated with convergent thinking.

00:56:12.440 | And again, divergent thinking and convergent thinking

00:56:14.240 | are the two processes that have to occur,

00:56:17.680 | usually first divergent, then convergent thinking,

00:56:20.120 | then back and forth and back and forth

00:56:21.480 | in order to arrive at something creative.

00:56:23.800 | Divergent thinking is about exploration.

00:56:25.560 | Convergent thinking is about testing things

00:56:27.280 | and coming up with things that are the right answer,

00:56:29.360 | that feel right.

00:56:30.680 | And we will better define what right means

00:56:32.560 | a little bit later,

00:56:33.660 | but you already sort of know right in this context

00:56:37.640 | is when you have some combination of elements

00:56:40.900 | or some idea or some written passage or some music

00:56:43.420 | or some physical action that you just know,

00:56:46.840 | this is really novel and really cool,

00:56:50.800 | or people see it or hear it or taste it and say,

00:56:54.800 | this is really novel and really cool.

00:56:56.780 | And they don't necessarily know why,

00:56:58.620 | it's just different in a way that feels true.

00:57:01.740 | I'd like to take a brief break

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00:58:06.400 | Now, I realize that for some of you listening

00:58:07.920 | to this episode, we are probably at the point

00:58:10.460 | along the pathway of concept and definition and mechanism

00:58:13.600 | that leaves you in a place of real wanting a tool.

00:58:17.920 | And so I promise that I'm going to get into more tools,

00:58:20.840 | but to satisfy you and to make sure

00:58:23.880 | that you do indeed understand that there are tools

00:58:26.720 | that can emerge from the information

00:58:27.960 | that you already now have in mind.

00:58:30.240 | I do want to share with you one particular tool

00:58:32.160 | from the literature that has been demonstrated

00:58:35.480 | over and over again to support and build

00:58:38.800 | and enhance divergent thinking.

00:58:41.640 | And I also want to share with you a tool

00:58:43.160 | that has been shown from the scientific literature

00:58:44.880 | to enhance convergent thinking

00:58:46.320 | because both convergent and divergent thinking

00:58:48.600 | are critical for the creative process.

00:58:50.620 | Now, I should emphasize that some people out there,

00:58:55.720 | either by training or by genetics or by both,

00:58:58.800 | will be naturally better

00:59:01.280 | at divergent or convergent thinking.

00:59:03.720 | And in fact, we now know in a kind of almost poetic

00:59:07.400 | kind of way that naturally occurring variations in genes

00:59:12.360 | which underlie naturally occurring variations

00:59:15.020 | in the percentage of dopamine

00:59:18.160 | in one set of brain circuits versus another

00:59:21.640 | do seem to relate to whether or not people

00:59:24.320 | are naturally good at divergent thinking

00:59:26.300 | or convergent thinking.

00:59:27.760 | Now, that's a very nature-based explanation

00:59:31.260 | for why some people are better at divergent thinking

00:59:33.260 | and other people are better at convergent thinking.

00:59:35.660 | Nature and nurture is something

00:59:38.260 | that can never really be teased apart exactly

00:59:40.800 | because of course, if someone has a natural proclivity

00:59:43.000 | for something based on their genes,

00:59:44.640 | you can't often separate that from their parents

00:59:48.260 | because we inherit our genes from our parents.

00:59:51.000 | Although, even in cases where people are raised away

00:59:53.320 | from their parents through adoption, et cetera,

00:59:55.820 | it's very hard to separate nature and nurture

00:59:59.320 | because somebody with a natural proclivity for things

01:00:01.340 | might engage in those things more, et cetera, et cetera.

01:00:04.120 | The point is that for those of you

01:00:05.900 | that are very, very good at divergent thinking

01:00:08.400 | or very, very good at convergent thinking,

01:00:10.420 | some of that might have been inherited,

01:00:12.840 | but more than likely some of that depended

01:00:14.800 | on the kinds of activities that you engaged in

01:00:17.580 | in your early years,

01:00:19.340 | in particular in the years between age five and 25.

01:00:23.280 | And for those of you that are aged between five and 25,

01:00:26.940 | all I can say is please learn to engage

01:00:29.220 | both divergent and convergent thinking as much as possible

01:00:32.140 | because you will enhance your ability for both.

01:00:33.760 | For those of you 25 and older,

01:00:35.560 | you can still enhance your ability

01:00:37.380 | to engage divergent and convergent thinking.

01:00:39.480 | And the fortunate news, the equalizer, I should say,

01:00:43.400 | is that regardless of whether or not

01:00:45.400 | you are naturally better at divergent or convergent thinking

01:00:48.000 | or you acquired it through activities,

01:00:50.260 | you need both in order to be creative.

01:00:52.240 | So what we know is that in order

01:00:53.600 | to engage divergent thinking,

01:00:55.040 | we need access to our memory banks.

01:00:57.000 | We need to come up with possibilities

01:00:58.640 | and those possibilities can only come from

01:01:00.760 | what's contained within our memory systems of our brain,

01:01:03.520 | areas like the hippocampus, et cetera.

01:01:05.920 | But the names, again, don't matter.

01:01:07.540 | We just know that if we are going to come up

01:01:09.860 | with novel combinations of things

01:01:11.520 | or novel uses of things or totally new ideas

01:01:13.960 | about how objects or notes of music or foods or tastes

01:01:17.520 | or whatever can be combined,

01:01:19.720 | we have to do that with preexisting knowledge.

01:01:21.560 | And yet what we need to do

01:01:22.860 | in order to engage divergent thinking

01:01:25.000 | is suppress what is called autobiographical narratives.

01:01:30.000 | And in particular autobiographical narratives,

01:01:32.280 | we need to discard with judgments

01:01:35.060 | about how certain combinations of things

01:01:38.080 | impacted us in the past.

01:01:39.800 | Now, this is, I think, is what people mean

01:01:41.860 | when they encourage the exploration of creativity

01:01:44.900 | by so-called boundary exploration.

01:01:46.920 | You hear about this a lot

01:01:47.840 | in kind of the self-help and psychology literature.

01:01:50.040 | And I'm not at all disparaging of that literature,

01:01:52.080 | although rarely does it define exactly how and why

01:01:55.360 | to go about being more creative

01:01:57.040 | or in this case to be more divergent in our thinking.

01:02:00.720 | So they'll say, you know, you have to take risks

01:02:02.700 | or you have to suppress judgment,

01:02:05.040 | but how do you actually do that?

01:02:06.640 | Well, there's a wonderful paper

01:02:08.240 | that talks about one way to do it.

01:02:10.460 | One way to do it is what's called

01:02:12.080 | open monitoring meditation

01:02:13.920 | or even just open monitoring thinking.

01:02:16.280 | And just to make what could otherwise

01:02:17.600 | be a somewhat complex section here,

01:02:19.960 | very simple, what I'll also tell you is that

01:02:22.080 | if you want to enhance convergent thinking,

01:02:25.020 | you can do that a number of ways,

01:02:27.320 | but you can do that in particular

01:02:29.160 | by doing a different type of meditation or thought process,

01:02:32.920 | which is called focused attention meditation.

01:02:35.520 | So let's talk about open monitoring meditation

01:02:37.680 | and why it's so useful for enhancing divergent thinking,

01:02:40.020 | this critical element of the creative process.

01:02:42.280 | First of all, open monitoring meditation

01:02:45.900 | and focused attention meditation

01:02:49.000 | can be performed the exact same way physically.

01:02:52.160 | You can sit there, eyes closed.

01:02:54.140 | I don't care if you're in a Lotus position,

01:02:55.840 | it doesn't really matter.

01:02:56.680 | You're lying down, you're standing up.

01:02:58.520 | You could in theory do open monitoring meditation

01:03:00.920 | with eyes open,

01:03:02.000 | and that would be an interesting variant on it.

01:03:03.760 | But for sake of the discussion right now,

01:03:06.200 | let's just focus on the study

01:03:07.580 | that talks about these specific tools

01:03:11.000 | and the way that they were used in the study.

01:03:13.320 | The title of the paper that I'm essentially summarizing

01:03:15.960 | is called open monitoring meditation

01:03:17.960 | reduces the involvement of brain regions

01:03:19.860 | related to memory function.

01:03:21.660 | Now, right off the bat,

01:03:22.720 | that should cue you to something interesting.

01:03:24.480 | Something about divergent thinking and open monitoring

01:03:27.080 | is related to suppressing memory.

01:03:30.080 | But as you recall, just a few moments ago,

01:03:32.360 | I said that in order to engage in divergent thinking,

01:03:35.200 | you need to kind of kill off the narratives

01:03:38.380 | of what has to be related to what

01:03:40.520 | and come up with new narratives.

01:03:41.760 | You still need to understand possibilities,

01:03:44.060 | but you need to forget prior understanding

01:03:46.800 | of what those possibilities have to be

01:03:48.640 | and start thinking about what those possibilities could be.

01:03:51.160 | And so that it turns out involves suppression

01:03:53.280 | of certain brain areas.

01:03:55.400 | Open monitoring meditation is typically done

01:03:57.860 | for about 10 to 30 minutes,

01:03:59.680 | although it could be longer.

01:04:01.560 | And unlike other forms of meditation

01:04:03.920 | where you sit and concentrate on your breathing

01:04:06.600 | and trying to redirect your thinking back to your breathing

01:04:09.320 | or to your posture or to a chant or a mantra,

01:04:14.000 | open monitoring meditation is simply a matter

01:04:17.120 | of having you sit there or lie down, close your eyes,

01:04:20.120 | and to allow whatever surfaces in your mind to surface.

01:04:23.960 | And what you practice is the practice of non-judgment.

01:04:27.920 | Now, non-judgment itself is a little bit

01:04:29.400 | of an abstract theme because of course,

01:04:31.360 | the moment you say don't judge,

01:04:33.280 | you and others start to judge.

01:04:34.780 | It's just the way that the brain works.

01:04:35.980 | You say, don't think about an elephant.

01:04:37.440 | You think about an elephant.

01:04:38.260 | That's a perfectly natural.

01:04:39.140 | You go to an edge of a bridge or a cliff

01:04:42.120 | and you think about jumping off

01:04:43.280 | even though you don't, please don't, jump off.

01:04:45.680 | And that's because it's part of the circuitry

01:04:47.280 | that's keeping you from jumping off

01:04:48.640 | is the thought about what would happen if you did, okay?

01:04:51.140 | So open monitoring meditation

01:04:53.060 | involves dedicating a certain amount of time

01:04:55.200 | where you close your eyes and whatever thoughts arise,

01:04:57.800 | whatever emotions arise, whatever ideas arise,

01:05:01.440 | to watch those and take an inventory of them,

01:05:04.560 | to just merely watch them show up and pass

01:05:07.280 | or maybe become fixated on them for some period of time

01:05:10.040 | or maybe even just one for a long period of time,

01:05:12.120 | all of that is fine.

01:05:13.160 | In other words, whatever surfaces, surfaces.

01:05:16.160 | That's open monitoring meditation

01:05:17.780 | and that we know from brain imaging studies

01:05:20.440 | and we know from measurements of dopamine

01:05:22.240 | in particular brain circuits

01:05:23.680 | and we know from people who train

01:05:26.600 | with open monitoring meditation on a regular basis

01:05:30.500 | improves divergent thinking capability.

01:05:33.640 | So in terms of tools, practicing open monitoring meditation

01:05:37.600 | or what I would just call open monitoring thinking

01:05:40.460 | is going to be immensely useful.

01:05:42.500 | And this is actually an opportunity to cue up something

01:05:44.800 | that I mentioned in our episode on meditation

01:05:46.800 | which goes deep into the different kinds of meditation

01:05:48.960 | involving focus inward and outward, et cetera.

01:05:51.260 | You're welcome to check out that episode.

01:05:52.680 | It's at hubermanlab.com.

01:05:54.460 | But the point is that rather than think about

01:05:57.840 | the word meditation, which carries a bunch of ideas

01:06:01.120 | about what it is and what it isn't and how to do it,

01:06:04.320 | meditation is really just a perceptual exercise.

01:06:07.040 | For instance, you could do a meditation

01:06:08.400 | where you look at a single point on a wall for five minutes

01:06:11.660 | and redirect your focus to that single point on a wall

01:06:14.260 | over and over again every time your mind drifts

01:06:16.020 | as it no doubt would, or to atone in the room.

01:06:19.000 | You could attend to that and redirect to that.

01:06:21.160 | Rather than think about it as a meditation,

01:06:22.500 | it's really just a perceptual exercise.

01:06:24.740 | That's all that meditation is.

01:06:26.580 | So open monitoring meditation

01:06:28.300 | is really just a form of perception

01:06:29.880 | where you're paying attention,

01:06:31.220 | you're perceiving your thoughts

01:06:33.100 | without laying judgment to those thoughts

01:06:35.320 | or trying not to lay judgment to those thoughts.

01:06:37.340 | And what people find is that they very quickly,

01:06:39.080 | within a few days,

01:06:40.140 | get better at doing open monitoring meditation.

01:06:42.260 | And fortunately, within just a few days,

01:06:45.120 | and certainly within about a week or more of practice,

01:06:48.180 | and it doesn't even have to be daily practice,

01:06:50.140 | so although of course daily practice

01:06:51.940 | will accelerate the process further,

01:06:53.680 | people become significantly better at divergent thinking.

01:06:57.060 | And that's because of the dopamine circuits

01:06:58.520 | and in particular along the nigrosteroidal pathway

01:07:01.380 | becoming more active.

01:07:02.420 | And the wonderful thing is that when you repeat a practice

01:07:05.540 | and a particular neural circuit is engaged

01:07:07.680 | over and over again deliberately,

01:07:09.660 | that neural circuit becomes easier to engage,

01:07:11.820 | so-called neuroplasticity.

01:07:13.980 | So I would encourage any of you

01:07:16.160 | that want to explore the creative process

01:07:19.020 | for whatever reason or get better at the creative process,

01:07:21.480 | dedicate some amount of time,

01:07:23.100 | maybe even just five minutes every other day

01:07:25.900 | to doing this open monitoring meditation.

01:07:27.980 | I've tried this meditation.

01:07:29.220 | It's actually quite fun to do

01:07:32.100 | because at least to me, it feels a lot easier

01:07:35.180 | than the meditation associated with convergent thinking.

01:07:38.860 | Now, the convergent thinking meditation

01:07:40.980 | is the so-called focus attention meditation,

01:07:43.460 | and that's also described in the same study,

01:07:45.600 | and other studies have explored

01:07:47.460 | which particular brain networks it involves,

01:07:49.860 | and I can just tell you that focused attention meditation,

01:07:53.400 | which you can think of or I'd prefer that you think of

01:07:55.340 | just as a perceptual exercise,

01:07:57.160 | involves sitting or lying down, closing your eyes,

01:07:59.620 | focusing either on your breath

01:08:01.540 | or some element of your body,

01:08:03.180 | could be the tops of your knees or the clasp of your hands.

01:08:07.460 | It could be focusing on an auditory tone.

01:08:10.460 | You could even do it eyes open

01:08:12.060 | and stare at a point on a wall or a flame of light,

01:08:15.100 | whatever it happens to be

01:08:16.540 | that allows you to redirect your focus

01:08:18.360 | to a particular location or idea or sound.

01:08:22.280 | That is known to improve your ability

01:08:26.700 | to engage convergent thinking,

01:08:28.500 | to quickly parse through or analyze

01:08:32.620 | a bunch of different choices,

01:08:34.500 | and to persist in choice selection

01:08:38.580 | and therefore more rapidly arrive at the correct answer.

01:08:41.360 | This is well-established,

01:08:42.540 | and in fact, in the episode that I did

01:08:43.900 | with a wonderful guest, Dr. Wendy Suzuki

01:08:45.860 | from New York University,

01:08:46.860 | she talked about how a daily meditation

01:08:49.140 | of about 10 to 13 minutes performed for about eight weeks,

01:08:52.100 | that's what they explored,

01:08:52.920 | and that study greatly increases people's ability to focus

01:08:56.740 | and in fact, their memory, and that's exactly the point,

01:08:59.220 | which is that convergent thinking, as I mentioned before,

01:09:01.460 | requires persistence, focus, and access to specific memories.

01:09:06.160 | So if you are somebody who wants to get better at focusing,

01:09:08.540 | that is the meditation for you.

01:09:10.300 | However, because today we're talking about creativity,

01:09:13.660 | if you are somebody who wants to get better

01:09:15.020 | at divergent thinking and convergent thinking,

01:09:17.140 | the two elements of creativity, that is,

01:09:19.900 | I would encourage you to do a dual meditation,

01:09:23.140 | that is a meditation that starts with open monitoring

01:09:27.540 | for maybe five to 10 minutes,

01:09:29.060 | and then transitions to focused attention

01:09:32.980 | for maybe five to 10 minutes,

01:09:34.600 | because the positioning of divergent thinking

01:09:38.420 | and then convergent thinking close together

01:09:41.020 | more closely resembles what the creative process really is

01:09:44.380 | and what it typically involves.

01:09:45.940 | Most of us would love to have a situation

01:09:48.680 | where we can spend a morning or a day or a week brainstorming

01:09:52.620 | just kind of brainstorming.

01:09:53.580 | Whatever we think about is fine, that's divergent thinking.

01:09:56.140 | Whatever elements, just throw them up on the whiteboard.

01:09:58.660 | We sometimes see people and companies

01:10:00.260 | doing this at retreats.

01:10:01.540 | You're bringing people into a novel environment.

01:10:03.580 | You say, "Let's just forget all the rules

01:10:04.900 | and let's just come up with new ideas about something,

01:10:08.700 | new uses of something, new strategies."

01:10:11.220 | And nothing is too crazy, nothing's off limits.

01:10:13.700 | And sure, that's a useful exercise, so-called brainstorming,

01:10:17.140 | but at some point there's the requirement

01:10:19.200 | to cross off things.

01:10:20.260 | And typically that's done later in the retreat

01:10:22.020 | or later in the meeting or later in the weekend.

01:10:24.740 | And that's a wonderful way to approach creativity

01:10:27.740 | and to try and be creative.

01:10:29.300 | But not a lot of people train for that on a regular basis.

01:10:32.380 | So what I just described to you are research-tested tools

01:10:35.240 | for training for divergent thinking and convergent thinking.

01:10:37.920 | And I would encourage people who are interested

01:10:39.580 | in being more creative to try and do these

01:10:42.500 | on a somewhat regular basis, if not every day,

01:10:44.880 | then certainly a few times a week or more.

01:10:47.660 | Certainly the more you do it,

01:10:49.240 | the better you're going to get at it.

01:10:50.300 | That's well demonstrated in the literature.

01:10:52.400 | And if you're somebody who's very consistent

01:10:53.820 | doing maybe five minutes of open monitoring meditation

01:10:56.660 | and five minutes immediately after

01:10:58.800 | of focused attention meditation daily,

01:11:01.100 | you can expect that you will get very, very good

01:11:03.240 | at these processes very, very quickly.

01:11:06.460 | Now, I'm not going to go into a lengthy description

01:11:08.680 | of the different lines of evidence

01:11:11.040 | that the corresponding areas of the brain are active

01:11:13.940 | in each of these different kinds of meditation.

01:11:15.940 | But what I can tell you is that there have been

01:11:17.500 | some beautiful, what are called loss of function studies

01:11:20.900 | where particular brain areas are either depleted of dopamine

01:11:24.580 | or where dopamine in some cases,

01:11:26.620 | I guess what we would call gain of function studies,

01:11:28.300 | although not the kind of gain of function studies

01:11:30.020 | associated with virology,

01:11:31.180 | different gain of function studies

01:11:32.620 | where you enhance the level of dopamine in the brain.

01:11:34.860 | What you find is that both divergent

01:11:37.460 | and convergent thinking are enhanced

01:11:41.300 | when levels of dopamine are elevated.

01:11:43.500 | Now, we're not necessarily talking about pharmacology here.

01:11:46.500 | It turns out that there are other ways to elevate dopamine

01:11:49.240 | that make us better at divergent and convergent thinking.

01:11:52.220 | In particular, by using mood.

01:11:55.620 | And now I'd like to talk about what mood you are in

01:11:59.780 | when you happen to start a creative process

01:12:02.180 | or try and do a sort of training

01:12:04.940 | such as open monitoring meditation or focused meditation,

01:12:08.100 | how your mood relates to your level of dopamine at baseline,

01:12:12.160 | what we call your sort of tonic as it's called,

01:12:14.580 | meaning consistent or ongoing level of dopamine,

01:12:18.540 | how that dictates whether or not you are going to be better

01:12:21.480 | at one particular aspect of the creative process or another,

01:12:24.640 | and how you can enhance your creativity

01:12:26.780 | in the very short term, very quickly,

01:12:29.500 | using tools that are known

01:12:31.440 | to trigger additional release of dopamine,

01:12:33.500 | which in some cases is good,

01:12:34.860 | and in some cases is bad, I should mention.

01:12:37.560 | And in other words,

01:12:39.720 | determine how you feel in one moment

01:12:43.020 | should dictate what sort of tool you should use

01:12:45.400 | in order to become more creative.

01:12:47.240 | The relationship between mood and creativity

01:12:50.180 | is a fascinating one that is bridged by one main feature,

01:12:54.760 | which is the amount of dopamine present

01:12:56.800 | in this nigrostriatal pathway.

01:12:58.800 | And there's a really wonderful correlate or measure

01:13:02.060 | of the amount of dopamine that's active in that pathway

01:13:05.040 | that can be addressed noninvasively in the laboratory.

01:13:08.580 | As I mentioned, the nigrostriatal pathway

01:13:10.200 | is involved in movement and in eye blinking,

01:13:14.100 | which of course is a movement.

01:13:15.340 | It's not a movement of the sort that we typically think of

01:13:17.380 | when we think of movements,

01:13:18.260 | but nonetheless, it relies on dopamine levels

01:13:20.460 | in this pathway.

01:13:21.300 | And in fact, we can state very confidently

01:13:24.220 | that when dopamine levels are elevated,

01:13:26.980 | the blinking reflex is more active.

01:13:29.340 | People just blink more.

01:13:30.360 | When dopamine levels are lower or less active

01:13:33.160 | in this pathway, people tend to blink less.

01:13:35.540 | So blink frequency is a common measure

01:13:38.780 | in studies of dopamine within this pathway

01:13:42.100 | that relate to creativity.

01:13:44.180 | The work that I'm about to describe

01:13:45.600 | is largely the work of two authors

01:13:47.660 | who have done wonderful work across several papers.

01:13:50.500 | Unfortunately for me, their names are difficult to pronounce,

01:13:53.020 | so I apologize to them and their relatives

01:13:54.600 | for what is sure to be incorrect pronunciation.

01:13:58.040 | But the last names of these authors

01:14:00.260 | are Cermahini and Hummel.

01:14:02.860 | They're in the Netherlands.

01:14:03.880 | So Cermahini and Hummel done a number of different papers

01:14:07.380 | or studies, rather, of the relationship

01:14:09.320 | between blinking, mood, and creativity,

01:14:11.740 | in particular, divergent thinking.

01:14:13.780 | What they found is that if people are blinking

01:14:15.940 | fairly often and they measure their mood

01:14:18.180 | through subjective tests,

01:14:19.340 | and if they were to do brain imaging,

01:14:20.940 | which other studies have done,

01:14:22.540 | they find is that those people can engage

01:14:24.640 | in divergent thinking very easily.

01:14:27.660 | In other words, being in a good mood

01:14:29.920 | facilitates divergent thinking.

01:14:32.640 | Now, some of you might immediately say, well, duh,

01:14:35.200 | if you're in a good mood, you can kind of be more playful

01:14:37.300 | about the exploration, about what could happen

01:14:39.580 | with these notes of music or these foods, et cetera.

01:14:42.460 | But it's not so obvious because it turns out

01:14:44.680 | that if your dopamine levels are very, very high,

01:14:47.960 | and this can be measured non-invasively

01:14:50.980 | through the frequency of blinks,

01:14:52.160 | or it can be measured more invasively through brain imaging,

01:14:54.880 | even through blood draws or other methods

01:14:57.100 | to measure dopamine, if dopamine levels are very, very high,

01:15:00.680 | what you observe is that divergent thinking

01:15:02.420 | is actually very, very poor.

01:15:04.520 | Now, a naturally occurring, truly pathological example

01:15:07.980 | of this would be something like manic bipolar disorder,

01:15:10.440 | where somebody is in the manic phase,

01:15:12.440 | or somebody who has taken methamphetamine or cocaine,

01:15:15.480 | what tends to happen is that they have lots and lots

01:15:17.740 | of ideas, all of those ideas seem really exciting to them,

01:15:21.280 | but if you were to talk to them for any given moment,

01:15:23.480 | they would be very fixated on one particular tunnel of ideas

01:15:27.520 | and by being fixated on one particular tunnel of ideas,

01:15:30.080 | like the idea that they're going to run

01:15:31.500 | for president tomorrow, this is unfortunately typical

01:15:34.540 | of people who have bipolar, which is not to say

01:15:37.360 | that everybody who runs for president is bipolar,

01:15:39.680 | rather people who are bipolar often have

01:15:41.720 | these delusions of grandeur,

01:15:43.480 | that they're somehow going to be president

01:15:44.880 | simply because they decided to,

01:15:46.040 | and that they were selected to do this, et cetera, et cetera,

01:15:48.720 | ideas about themselves and other people

01:15:50.220 | that are very constrained, in other words,

01:15:52.600 | not very divergent, so divergent thinking is favored

01:15:56.040 | by having elevated levels of dopamine, but not too high,

01:16:01.040 | well, that of course creates a conundrum,

01:16:02.560 | how do you know how much dopamine you need

01:16:04.680 | and how to achieve those elevated levels of dopamine?

01:16:07.040 | Well, leaving aside people who are suffering

01:16:09.280 | from a manic episode, what Cermahini and Hummel have discovered

01:16:14.280 | is that if people are in sort of a low mood,

01:16:17.400 | they're not feeling great, maybe they're depressed,

01:16:20.400 | but they're just not feeling that great,

01:16:21.760 | they feel, you know, on a scale of one to 10,

01:16:23.600 | around a two or a three, maybe a four,

01:16:25.960 | the probability that they will be able to engage effectively

01:16:29.020 | in divergent thinking is quite low,

01:16:31.560 | however, the good news is they are typically very susceptible

01:16:36.280 | to elevations in mood through observing

01:16:39.880 | or hearing positive stories, listening to music

01:16:43.480 | that they like, any kind of so-called inspirational stimuli,

01:16:47.200 | now this is good news, what this means is that

01:16:48.840 | if you're somebody who's not feeling very motivated

01:16:51.440 | to engage in divergent thinking,

01:16:52.720 | you're not feeling very creative,

01:16:54.240 | you're feeling a little low, the thing to do in that case

01:16:57.560 | is actually to take external stimuli,

01:17:00.520 | things that you know that you like

01:17:02.000 | and start interacting with those stimuli

01:17:03.760 | to get your mood elevated and then to engage

01:17:06.680 | in divergent thinking, however,

01:17:08.120 | what Cermahini and Hummel have also shown

01:17:11.640 | is that if people are already in a very good mood,

01:17:16.640 | elevating dopamine further is not conducive

01:17:20.320 | and in fact is detrimental to divergent thinking

01:17:23.320 | and in that case, they would be better off, for example,

01:17:27.480 | not engaging in any activities or, you know,

01:17:31.120 | taking anything in the way of pharmacology

01:17:33.300 | that would further increase their dopamine

01:17:35.600 | and probably limiting the amount of external stimuli

01:17:38.880 | that are coming in through music and visual stimuli

01:17:41.400 | and really focusing on divergent thinking

01:17:43.560 | in the creative process immediately.

01:17:45.840 | Now, this is important, in an earlier episode,

01:17:48.380 | both on bipolar and on other forms of depression,

01:17:50.920 | I talked about how rates of bipolar manic episodes

01:17:55.920 | and dopamine levels and creativity tend to be correlated,

01:18:00.800 | now, unfortunately, rates of suicide are 20 to 30 times

01:18:04.140 | higher in people who have bipolar disorder as well

01:18:06.560 | and so there's a whole dark side to the bipolar disorder

01:18:09.440 | that makes it a very, very dangerous

01:18:10.780 | and important disorder to treat

01:18:13.060 | but for sake of the discussion of creativity,

01:18:16.560 | what this means is that we all need to develop

01:18:18.920 | some sort of intuitive sense as to whether or not

01:18:20.800 | our mood is, suppose we could bend this

01:18:23.900 | into three categories, is kind of yes, you know,

01:18:27.780 | happy, excited, positive mood

01:18:29.560 | and of course, there are going to be levels to that,

01:18:32.100 | low, kind of like hmm, or kind of meh, kind of in the middle

01:18:36.080 | so if you're in a low mood or kind of meh mood,

01:18:38.960 | by all means, engage in something

01:18:41.120 | probably for about, you know, five to 30 minutes

01:18:43.040 | that elevates your mood

01:18:44.480 | before trying to engage in divergent thinking.

01:18:46.400 | However, if you happen to be in a pretty positive mood,

01:18:48.800 | even if you're not 10 out of 10 on mood,

01:18:51.200 | then bringing in additional stimuli

01:18:54.320 | to increase your levels of dopamine will not help you

01:18:57.180 | and in fact can hurt the divergent thinking process.

01:19:00.180 | So in that case, I would also encourage you to think about

01:19:03.380 | something that was discussed on a previous episode

01:19:05.500 | which is the particular effects of caffeine.

01:19:07.820 | I'll get into caffeine a little bit later

01:19:09.660 | but just very briefly,

01:19:11.500 | caffeine increases levels of dopamine receptors

01:19:14.660 | so it's not that caffeine is bad,

01:19:16.100 | in fact, caffeine can be neuroprotective,

01:19:17.740 | it can enhance focus and so forth

01:19:19.820 | but divergent thinking is sort of anti-focus,

01:19:22.700 | it requires just enough focus to be able

01:19:24.740 | to come up with new ideas

01:19:26.300 | but you actually don't want to be overly focused.

01:19:28.700 | Focus is more conducive to convergent thinking,

01:19:31.120 | in fact, that's exactly what the literature shows

01:19:33.140 | is that caffeine, because its effects on epinephrine

01:19:36.200 | and related systems in the brain like adenosine

01:19:38.760 | but mainly because of its effects on persistence and focus

01:19:41.820 | is very conducive to convergent thinking.

01:19:44.860 | So if you're somebody who wants to explore creativity

01:19:48.140 | and wants to get better at creativity,

01:19:49.940 | you now know that you need to engage in divergent thinking

01:19:52.480 | and then afterwards, convergent thinking.

01:19:56.020 | I would recommend not using stimulants such as caffeine

01:19:59.340 | prior to divergent thinking but rather use stimulants

01:20:02.940 | if you do want to use stimulants such as caffeine

01:20:05.500 | prior to convergent thinking

01:20:07.580 | and in fact, in formulating the architecture

01:20:10.440 | of today's episode, which took me many hours

01:20:13.320 | across many different days, I confess,

01:20:15.500 | I actually decided to try this.

01:20:17.180 | In trying to imagine the different configurations

01:20:19.460 | and ways that this information can be organized,

01:20:21.740 | I deliberately abstained from caffeine

01:20:23.220 | during those bouts of work

01:20:24.940 | and when structuring everything

01:20:27.140 | according to the decisions I had already made,

01:20:30.140 | I purposely ingested caffeine prior to that.

01:20:33.060 | Now, of course, constructing a podcast episode

01:20:36.340 | is not really the ultimate example of a creative act

01:20:40.060 | because of course, it's taking existing information,

01:20:42.180 | it's arranging it in novel ways

01:20:43.460 | but it doesn't necessarily allow key concepts to pop out

01:20:46.540 | in the way that for instance, Banksy or a Rothko

01:20:49.460 | or an Escher would pop out, okay?

01:20:51.260 | I'm certainly not naive in thinking that it does

01:20:53.940 | but the principle is what's important here.

01:20:57.460 | You need divergent thinking, you need convergent thinking,

01:20:59.760 | you need some level of elevated dopamine

01:21:02.180 | in order to engage in divergent thinking

01:21:05.140 | but not so high that it starts to inhibit that process.

01:21:08.020 | Now, if you were to come into the laboratory,

01:21:09.940 | this could be measured by your frequency of blinking.

01:21:12.660 | For better or for worse,

01:21:13.500 | we can't actually count the number of times that we blink

01:21:15.900 | unless we're actively paying attention to it.

01:21:17.620 | So I don't recommend that you pay attention

01:21:18.820 | to your blinking because that will take you off course

01:21:20.580 | from all the other important things of your life

01:21:22.700 | and how many times you're blinking

01:21:24.340 | is rarely an important thing for you to pay attention to.

01:21:27.780 | You can however, learn to calibrate your mood,

01:21:30.740 | that is to assess your mood,

01:21:32.980 | whether or not you're in low, medium or high mood,

01:21:35.980 | no problem using that broad binning, right?

01:21:38.620 | You could scale it on one to 10

01:21:39.980 | and then decide whether or not you're going to use

01:21:41.740 | some dopamine elevating stimulus from the outside.

01:21:44.240 | Again, it could be music, could be exercise

01:21:46.860 | is an excellent way to elevate dopamine.

01:21:48.420 | I'll talk about another well-established one

01:21:50.420 | from the research literature

01:21:52.120 | that is known to elevate dopamine by 65%

01:21:56.500 | in the particular pathway

01:21:57.940 | that's relevant for divergent thinking

01:22:00.220 | and to do that without any pharmacology.

01:22:02.120 | I'll share that with you in a moment,

01:22:03.620 | but you need to decide for you in a given moment

01:22:06.940 | or in a given work attempt at creativity,

01:22:09.720 | what you need and apply accordingly

01:22:11.720 | because as Cheremini and Hummel have shown,

01:22:15.640 | whether or not you are in a low mood, medium mood

01:22:17.860 | or high mood really can determine

01:22:20.080 | whether or not you'll be able to access

01:22:22.100 | divergent thinking or not.

01:22:23.660 | Now, if you're somebody who already has an idea in mind,

01:22:26.380 | you're very excited about a creative idea

01:22:28.220 | and you want to hone it, you want to shape it,

01:22:30.680 | you want to pressure test it.

01:22:32.160 | We'll talk a little bit more about what that means

01:22:33.820 | in a three-step process in just a little bit.

01:22:36.120 | I would strongly encourage you to look at that process

01:22:41.140 | as a very linear process

01:22:42.780 | in which there are right and wrong answers.

01:22:45.180 | And there the use of caffeine at appropriate dosages

01:22:48.540 | and dosages for caffeine that are safe

01:22:50.740 | and in fact performance enhancing

01:22:52.240 | were covered in the episode on caffeine.

01:22:53.740 | Turns out it's one to three milligrams

01:22:56.040 | per kilogram of body weight, by the way.

01:22:58.440 | And if you want to leverage caffeine

01:23:00.860 | or maybe even other forms of healthy legal stimulants,

01:23:04.620 | those are covered in the caffeine episode

01:23:06.620 | and I'll talk about a few more a little bit later.

01:23:08.480 | So to summarize this segment

01:23:09.780 | and also just to make a more general point,

01:23:11.560 | I think it's very useful for people

01:23:13.020 | to start to pay attention to what their tonic level,

01:23:16.480 | that is their baseline level of dopamine,

01:23:19.040 | ought to be in this nigrostriatal circuit

01:23:22.560 | and in other circuits.

01:23:23.560 | And to do that by learning to assess one's mood

01:23:26.100 | and pay attention to what kind of mood they happen to be in

01:23:28.960 | and then to leverage tools, behavioral tools,

01:23:31.240 | maybe pharmacologic tools,

01:23:32.360 | provided they're safe and they're legal

01:23:34.200 | in order to either increase dopamine

01:23:36.580 | or to elect not to increase dopamine

01:23:39.080 | in order to access the creative process.

01:23:41.360 | Now I've mentioned pharmacology a few times

01:23:43.060 | and I'd like to talk about that just a little bit more

01:23:44.760 | in the context of dopamine.

01:23:46.800 | First of all, there is no supplement or drug

01:23:50.880 | that you or anyone else can take

01:23:54.000 | that will selectively elevate dopamine

01:23:56.700 | in only one of the four circuits that I described before.

01:24:00.520 | Okay, this is just the state of the technology nowadays.

01:24:03.220 | If you take a pill

01:24:04.420 | or even if you were to inject some substance,

01:24:06.360 | again, I hope this would be legal and safe, et cetera,

01:24:10.420 | whatever mode of delivery,

01:24:12.080 | there is no technology that exists at this time

01:24:15.280 | that would allow you to selectively amplify dopamine,

01:24:18.400 | for instance, just in the nigrostriatal pathway

01:24:21.300 | or just in the mesocortical pathway.

01:24:23.200 | Again, the nigrostriatal pathway

01:24:24.420 | associated with divergent thinking,

01:24:26.360 | the mesocortical pathway associated

01:24:27.880 | with cognitive persistence and convergent thinking.

01:24:30.860 | If you were to amplify dopamine levels, for instance,

01:24:34.760 | by taking the amino acid precursor to dopamine L-tyrosine,

01:24:37.880 | something that I occasionally do to enhance dopamine levels

01:24:40.560 | for sake of work or energy,

01:24:42.080 | 500 milligrams or a thousand milligrams,

01:24:43.920 | even a L-tyrosine,

01:24:45.040 | sometimes I'll combine that with other things like alpha-GPC,

01:24:47.680 | it's going to enhance dopamine transmission

01:24:50.600 | in the nigrostriatal pathway, the mesocortical pathway,

01:24:53.420 | but also in the mesolimbic pathway,

01:24:55.160 | and also for that matter,

01:24:56.400 | in the tuberoinframedibular pathway

01:24:58.360 | associated with the pituitary.

01:24:59.640 | There is no way to direct dopamine activation

01:25:03.080 | to just one of those pathways.

01:25:05.240 | That's just a reflection of the existing technology.

01:25:08.180 | Now, this is also true

01:25:09.420 | if you rely on illicit drugs to increase dopamine.

01:25:12.900 | So if it's cocaine or methamphetamine,

01:25:14.420 | those will greatly increase dopamine,

01:25:16.940 | but non-selectively across all those different pathways.

01:25:20.620 | And likewise with any drugs that inhibit or block

01:25:24.120 | or antagonize, as it's called, dopamine.

01:25:26.640 | This is why people who, for instance,

01:25:28.800 | have schizophrenia and take drugs

01:25:30.800 | to suppress auditory hallucinations,

01:25:33.120 | some of those drugs work

01:25:35.400 | because they block the so-called D2 receptor

01:25:37.520 | of the dopamine pathway.

01:25:38.400 | D2 receptors are present in all four

01:25:40.760 | of the dopaminergic pathways in the brain.

01:25:42.540 | And oftentimes those drugs will in fact

01:25:45.440 | suppress psychotic symptoms, auditory hallucinations, et cetera

01:25:48.120 | because they reduce dopamine.

01:25:49.740 | But those people oftentimes will have problems

01:25:52.240 | with movement.

01:25:53.080 | They will express what's called

01:25:54.560 | in the clinical literature, tardive dyskinesia,

01:25:57.320 | kind of writhing of the face and the body

01:26:00.020 | from suppression of dopamine

01:26:02.360 | within the nigrostriatal pathway,

01:26:04.060 | which is associated with movement.

01:26:05.200 | They will sometimes have deficits in eye blinking.

01:26:07.760 | People with Parkinson's who actually have selective deficits

01:26:11.000 | of dopamine within the substantia nigra,

01:26:13.800 | nigrostriatal, remember, substantia nigra,

01:26:16.240 | show deficits in what?

01:26:17.520 | In movement, in the smoothness of movement.

01:26:19.360 | Oftentimes they won't blink at all.

01:26:21.240 | They'll have kind of a blank stare

01:26:22.960 | and they have other issues as well.

01:26:24.720 | So if you're somebody who's interested

01:26:26.960 | in increasing dopamine through the use

01:26:28.920 | of legal safe pharmacology,

01:26:31.440 | as I would hope it would be the case,

01:26:33.960 | there are ways to do that reasonably safely

01:26:36.040 | for most people.

01:26:36.880 | And people with bipolar disorder,

01:26:38.200 | issues with the dopaminergic pathway should not do this.

01:26:40.880 | I know nowadays there's a lot of use

01:26:43.280 | of drugs that increase dopamine,

01:26:46.000 | such as Ritalin, Adderall, Modafinil, R-modafinil,

01:26:51.000 | often prescribed for things like

01:26:53.200 | attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

01:26:54.920 | We did an entire episode on ADHD

01:26:56.840 | and pharmacologic prescription supplement

01:26:59.280 | and behavioral nutritional tools for ADHD.

01:27:01.360 | You can find that episode at hubermanlab.com.

01:27:03.800 | I know a number of people take those compounds

01:27:06.100 | in order to increase dopamine and focus

01:27:08.680 | for sake of studying or other activities,

01:27:12.160 | staying up long hours, et cetera.

01:27:14.080 | And the fact that they increase focus,

01:27:15.920 | they are effective although they do have their side effects,

01:27:18.860 | sometimes severe, sometimes habit forming,

01:27:21.040 | sometimes even addicting as well.

01:27:22.960 | But the fact that they increase focus

01:27:24.400 | should automatically tell you something,

01:27:26.420 | that those drugs in particular increase dopamine

01:27:30.840 | in the so-called mesocortical and mesolimbic pathways.

01:27:35.880 | Why can I say that?

01:27:37.120 | How can I say that with any degree of confidence?

01:27:39.140 | Well, there are these four pathways,

01:27:40.560 | one's involved in movement,

01:27:42.660 | but these other ones are involved in motivation

01:27:45.300 | and desire and reward.

01:27:47.140 | And I told you that these things can be habit forming

01:27:48.960 | and addicting in some cases,

01:27:50.180 | and they can greatly increase focus

01:27:52.860 | and focus is supported by enhanced levels of dopamine

01:27:56.740 | within this mesolimbic and mesocortical pathway.

01:28:00.680 | So yes, those drugs increase dopamine across the board,

01:28:03.460 | but there does seem to be some weighting of dopamine

01:28:05.900 | toward the systems involved in motivation and reward,

01:28:08.600 | and sometimes even leading to habit formation and addiction.

01:28:11.220 | That's why those drugs should only be taken

01:28:14.440 | with the close supervision of a very skilled psychiatrist

01:28:19.000 | or somebody else who's board certified

01:28:20.720 | who can really govern that.

01:28:22.120 | There are, however, ways to increase dopamine

01:28:26.040 | more evenly across the board

01:28:27.680 | using non-prescription approaches.

01:28:29.220 | And one I already mentioned, which is L-tyrosine,

01:28:32.120 | taken typically in dosages of 500 to 1,000 milligrams.

01:28:35.160 | L-tyrosine is not as potent in increasing dopamine

01:28:38.300 | as are the prescriptions drugs that I referred to before,

01:28:42.520 | tends to be milder.

01:28:43.440 | For some people, it can have a very amplified effect.

01:28:45.920 | They feel it right away.

01:28:46.840 | It's very intense in elevating focus and motivation

01:28:50.440 | and the desire to move.

01:28:52.440 | For other people, it's less potent.

01:28:55.040 | It really depends on a number of things.

01:28:56.700 | I should mention that regular consumption of caffeine

01:28:59.480 | of one to three milligrams per kilogram body weight per day

01:29:02.520 | also will increase dopamine receptor efficacy and density,

01:29:06.600 | which will make any existing dopamine more effective,

01:29:09.920 | whether or not that dopamine is triggered

01:29:11.880 | by things like L-tyrosine,

01:29:12.920 | or if you're not taking anything to elevate dopamine,

01:29:15.640 | the dopamine that you do make will be more effective

01:29:18.000 | in elevating your mood, motivation, and desire to move,

01:29:22.640 | and by extension, divergent thinking

01:29:25.080 | if you are consuming caffeine.

01:29:26.360 | But again, caffeine should be taken

01:29:27.920 | prior to convergent thinking type task,

01:29:29.640 | probably more than it should be taken

01:29:31.360 | prior to divergent thinking task.

01:29:33.380 | And of course, there are other legal supplements

01:29:35.640 | that can elevate dopamine as well.

01:29:37.040 | In particular, phenylethylamine is very effective

01:29:39.360 | in doing that.

01:29:40.180 | 600 milligrams of that has a brief effect,

01:29:43.020 | lasting only about 30 to 45 minutes,

01:29:45.080 | but it is one that many people find beneficial

01:29:46.880 | for sake of studying or for creative thinking

01:29:49.360 | and so on and so forth.

01:29:50.600 | Now that's pharmacology.

01:29:51.880 | And in fact, there's an extensive landscape of prescription

01:29:54.720 | and supplement-based pharmacology and indeed nutrition.

01:29:57.940 | For instance, the consumption of foods

01:29:59.740 | that are high in L-tyrosine,

01:30:01.240 | such as aged Parmesan cheese, for instance, of all things,

01:30:04.280 | very, very high in L-tyrosine,

01:30:05.720 | the precursor to dopamine, certain foods.

01:30:08.040 | You can look up online

01:30:09.000 | which foods contain high levels of L-tyrosine

01:30:11.360 | and which ones are compatible with your nutrition.

01:30:13.740 | But leaving pharmacology aside,

01:30:16.680 | there's a very exciting non-pharmacological tool,

01:30:20.500 | a purely behavioral tool,

01:30:22.280 | that the research literature has told us

01:30:24.880 | can selectively increase dopamine

01:30:27.980 | within the nigrostriatal pathway,

01:30:30.680 | the pathway that's involved in divergent thinking,

01:30:33.160 | and can do so very dramatically,

01:30:35.080 | as much as 65% above baseline.

01:30:37.880 | And so this is a behavioral tool

01:30:39.940 | that is useful for a number of things,

01:30:42.100 | but that I find particularly interesting

01:30:44.540 | in leveraging towards the exploration

01:30:46.600 | and enhancement of creativity,

01:30:48.040 | because first of all, it's purely behavioral.

01:30:49.880 | So it's zero cost.

01:30:51.760 | And it involves no manipulation of brain neuromodulators

01:30:56.660 | or chemistry through pharmacology.

01:30:58.480 | So it's something that you can explore very safely

01:31:01.080 | and certainly not having to purchase anything.

01:31:03.320 | And what's really remarkable is the selectivity,

01:31:06.520 | or I think it's fair to say the immense selectivity

01:31:09.480 | that this particular behavioral intervention

01:31:11.880 | seems to exert on dopamine within this pathway

01:31:15.280 | associated with divergent thinking.

01:31:17.240 | So the study that I'm about to describe

01:31:18.920 | is a study that dates back 20 years.

01:31:21.520 | Now that should not concern you.

01:31:22.720 | In fact, the early arrival of this study,

01:31:26.600 | or what now seems to be early arrival,

01:31:28.460 | I mean, it wasn't that long ago,

01:31:30.680 | is really exciting because the first line of this study

01:31:33.720 | really illustrates how important

01:31:36.080 | or how much of a landmark study this really is.

01:31:38.400 | And so I'll just read you the first line of the study,

01:31:40.280 | then I'll tell you the title,

01:31:41.220 | then I'll tell you what they discovered

01:31:43.320 | in fairly top contour,

01:31:45.120 | and we will provide a link to the study

01:31:46.520 | if you want to peruse it in more detail.

01:31:49.060 | The first line of the study is,

01:31:50.660 | this is the first in vivo, just meaning in the organism,

01:31:53.720 | in this case, this was a study on humans.

01:31:56.080 | This is the first in vivo demonstration of an association

01:31:59.080 | between an endogenous neurotransmitter release,

01:32:02.480 | endogenous means within us, and conscious experience.

01:32:05.840 | So what this sentence essentially says

01:32:07.220 | is this is the first study exploring

01:32:08.900 | how a chemical that's naturally released in our body

01:32:11.380 | relates to a particular quality of conscious experience.

01:32:16.080 | This study was performed in Scandinavia,

01:32:18.640 | in one of the hospitals in Denmark.

01:32:20.940 | Again, we'll provide a link.

01:32:21.980 | The first author is Keher,

01:32:23.500 | I think I'm pronouncing it correctly,

01:32:24.780 | although probably not K-J-A-E-R, at all.

01:32:29.100 | And the title of the study is increased dopamine tone

01:32:31.720 | during meditation-induced change of consciousness.

01:32:34.240 | And I want to just highlight that the meditation

01:32:36.120 | used in this study isn't really a meditation at all.

01:32:38.500 | I don't know why they selected that for the title.

01:32:40.840 | The behavioral protocol used in this study

01:32:43.220 | was more akin to what is normally called yoga nidra,

01:32:46.840 | or NSDR, non-sleep deep rest.

01:32:49.380 | Now, yoga nidra and NSDR have been discussed

01:32:51.520 | many times before on this podcast.

01:32:53.660 | Yoga nidra, for instance, is a practice

01:32:55.300 | that's been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years,

01:32:57.460 | in which people deliberately lie still.

01:33:00.240 | So they're forcing themselves to be mostly motionless.

01:33:03.380 | Small movements are fine.

01:33:05.260 | And they're directing their attention

01:33:06.740 | to the surface of their body.

01:33:07.840 | They're doing long exhale breathing,

01:33:09.140 | sometimes some intentions, sometimes some visualization,

01:33:12.580 | but it's really self-directed relaxation.

01:33:15.220 | And the key component is that people stay awake

01:33:18.420 | and engage in very little movement.

01:33:20.940 | And the key word there is movement.

01:33:22.680 | Now, non-sleep deep rest is a acronym,

01:33:26.340 | a term that I coined.

01:33:27.540 | It's not a term that I coined in order to try

01:33:30.140 | and wipe away or discard with yoga nidra.

01:33:32.700 | I'm a person who has great respect

01:33:34.700 | for yoga nidra and its traditions.

01:33:37.100 | It's a term that I coined in order to encompass

01:33:40.560 | a number of practices that don't include

01:33:42.620 | any mystical type language or scientific language

01:33:46.080 | for that matter.

01:33:46.920 | And that doesn't involve intentions.

01:33:48.580 | It involves deep relaxation,

01:33:50.500 | yet remaining wide awake and conscious.

01:33:52.940 | Sometimes people fall asleep and that's okay.

01:33:54.980 | But this is really an atypical brain state

01:33:57.500 | of being deeply relaxed, yet in general awake and motionless.

01:34:02.500 | Again, motionless being the key.

01:34:05.540 | Very few brain states involve us being mostly,

01:34:08.400 | if not completely motionless and yet awake.

01:34:11.020 | And it turns out that brain state,

01:34:12.300 | whether or not you call it yoga nidra, you call it NSDR,

01:34:14.740 | whether or not you call it meditation-induced shift

01:34:17.540 | in consciousness as they did in this study,

01:34:20.220 | although they do refer to yoga nidra,

01:34:22.300 | all refer to the same thing,

01:34:23.520 | which is being motionless and yet aware

01:34:27.620 | and relaxed, I should mention.

01:34:29.680 | So in this study,

01:34:30.540 | what they did was they brought subjects into the laboratory.

01:34:34.020 | They had them either undergo

01:34:36.780 | this self-directed deep relaxation

01:34:38.940 | while they are motionless or mostly motionless,

01:34:41.820 | or they had them listen to an audio script

01:34:45.100 | while also just lying there with eyes closed.

01:34:47.300 | And then they used a number of chemical tricks.

01:34:50.020 | And I don't want to get too deep into those now

01:34:51.380 | 'cause they can be a little bit distracting.

01:34:52.720 | For those of you that are interested,

01:34:53.740 | you can look at it in the study.

01:34:54.740 | This is a binding of a chemical in the brain

01:34:57.660 | that then they can image with brain imaging,

01:34:59.180 | which is what they did in the study,

01:35:00.380 | to evaluate how much dopamine changed in the brain

01:35:04.100 | and where specifically in the brain dopamine

01:35:06.300 | changed its levels before, during, and after

01:35:09.500 | this particular behavioral practice

01:35:11.920 | in one or the other group.

01:35:13.140 | And what they discovered is that

01:35:15.620 | people who did this deep relaxation,

01:35:17.980 | that is self-directed deep relaxation,

01:35:21.180 | lying there, eyes closed,

01:35:22.640 | relatively motionless,

01:35:26.240 | although small movements of the body

01:35:27.860 | or movements of the head are absolutely fine.

01:35:30.600 | What they observed was a 65% increase in dopamine release.

01:35:35.460 | Now here it's key, dopamine release.

01:35:38.220 | And they observed an increase in so-called theta activity.

01:35:41.440 | Theta activity is a pattern of brainwave activity

01:35:44.880 | that's commonly associated with creative states

01:35:47.820 | and divergent thinking in particular, so that's important.

01:35:51.280 | And they observed that across subjects,

01:35:53.700 | specifically in the nigrostriatal pathway,

01:35:55.980 | this pathway associated with divergent thinking.

01:35:58.460 | So this is very exciting.

01:35:59.680 | This is a study that really points to a behavioral tool

01:36:02.640 | that can be used to selectively elevate dopamine

01:36:05.160 | in the very pathway that one would want to

01:36:08.100 | if they wanted to engage divergent thinking

01:36:09.980 | for sake of creative exploration.

01:36:12.200 | There are also a number of key observations

01:36:14.040 | within this study.

01:36:15.720 | First of all, the reduction in bodily movement was essential.

01:36:20.720 | In fact, when people rated

01:36:23.520 | or when the amount of readiness for action in their system,

01:36:28.380 | their body, was evaluated,

01:36:30.340 | what people found was that immediately after this practice,

01:36:33.480 | they felt very still.

01:36:34.940 | In other words, they felt as if remaining still was natural.

01:36:38.160 | Now, it's not the case that they couldn't move.

01:36:39.720 | In fact, the elevation in dopamine that occurred

01:36:42.280 | during this practice,

01:36:44.120 | this yoga nidra-like non-sleep or NSDR-like practice,

01:36:48.500 | actually prepared them to be able to move

01:36:51.120 | in a much more dedicated and robust way afterwards.

01:36:55.000 | But during the practice,

01:36:55.960 | their readiness for action went way, way down.

01:36:57.700 | Not surprising, they were pretty much motionless.

01:37:00.340 | But interestingly,

01:37:01.580 | as the level of readiness for movement

01:37:05.120 | went down, down, down, down, down,

01:37:06.960 | their degree of visual imagery,

01:37:09.160 | that is their internal landscape

01:37:11.520 | and their ability to imagine new things, increased.

01:37:15.640 | And in fact, areas of the brain

01:37:17.400 | that are associated with visual imagery,

01:37:19.080 | such as the visual or so-called occipital cortex

01:37:22.180 | and the parietal cortex has been shown in other studies

01:37:25.000 | to ramp up when people are motionless.

01:37:27.000 | So there seems to be this inverse relationship

01:37:28.840 | between movement and visual imagery, which makes sense.

01:37:31.700 | When we're moving,

01:37:32.540 | we can pay attention to things in the outside world.

01:37:34.720 | We tend to be aware of our sensory environment

01:37:36.740 | to varying degrees,

01:37:38.300 | but we don't tend to be very focused

01:37:39.940 | on visual imagery within our head.

01:37:41.400 | Whereas when we lie down or sit down and close our eyes

01:37:44.060 | and we are motionless,

01:37:45.140 | the degree of visual imagery really increases.

01:37:48.080 | Hence the increase in divergent thinking

01:37:50.460 | because what essentially is happening

01:37:52.060 | is the library of options,

01:37:54.420 | the library of possible interactions

01:37:56.760 | with whatever it is that you're thinking about.

01:37:58.340 | I gave the example,

01:37:59.180 | which is a trivial one on purpose of a pen,

01:38:01.360 | but the bank of options that becomes available

01:38:04.780 | when we are motionless

01:38:05.960 | and when we are limiting our visualization

01:38:08.660 | of the external world increases exponentially.

01:38:12.240 | So this is important.

01:38:13.120 | And what it points to is the fact that this very simple,

01:38:16.060 | completely non-pharmacologic behavioral practice

01:38:18.840 | of lying down motionless for some period of time.

01:38:20.980 | And I confess the amount of time

01:38:22.500 | that they use in this study was quite long.

01:38:24.880 | It was longer than 60 minutes,

01:38:27.000 | but all the data that I'm aware of

01:38:29.240 | in terms of NSDR and yoga nidra,

01:38:31.160 | and there's a growing body of literature

01:38:32.800 | on these practices I should mention,

01:38:35.160 | show that even 10 minutes,

01:38:37.780 | or even better would be 20 or 30 minutes

01:38:40.240 | of lying motionless with eyes closed

01:38:43.120 | and allowing the mind to drift wherever it happens to go,

01:38:47.040 | but focusing on relaxing by doing long exhale breathing,

01:38:51.760 | perhaps doing a body scan

01:38:53.060 | of focusing your attention on particular body parts,

01:38:55.800 | but not keeping it focused on any one particular body part

01:38:58.440 | for that long.

01:38:59.540 | That general practice of deep relaxation while awake

01:39:02.420 | and being relatively motionless

01:39:04.320 | really favors the brain states

01:39:06.560 | associated with divergent thinking

01:39:07.880 | and actually represents an accessing

01:39:10.680 | of the various components

01:39:12.200 | that you would use during divergent thinking.

01:39:15.040 | And perhaps most excitingly,

01:39:17.160 | it's associated with this massive increase,

01:39:19.280 | 65% increase in dopamine release within the very pathway

01:39:23.180 | that underlies divergent thinking.

01:39:25.200 | So my recommendation would be for those of you

01:39:27.100 | that are trying to enhance divergent thinking

01:39:28.900 | and creative ability,

01:39:30.280 | that you would do this practice at a minimum once per week.

01:39:34.380 | And I should say, if you were going to do it once per week,

01:39:36.400 | I'd recommend doing it for about 20 to 30 minutes.

01:39:39.040 | Some of you might be able to do it

01:39:40.240 | for as long as 60 minutes.

01:39:42.000 | I myself do such a practice on a daily basis,

01:39:44.520 | anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes,

01:39:46.760 | sometimes 30 minutes.

01:39:48.580 | There's an example of an NSDR script completely zero cost.

01:39:52.560 | I confess it does happen to be my voice.

01:39:54.700 | So forgive me in advance.

01:39:56.440 | There are other options of NSDR.

01:39:57.940 | You can go to YouTube, put NSDR and my name.

01:40:00.780 | Again, completely zero cost.

01:40:02.080 | You can get a sample of what a 10 minute NSDR script

01:40:05.720 | looks like, that's through Virtusan, put that out there.

01:40:09.300 | So thank you Virtusan for putting that out there

01:40:11.100 | at zero cost.

01:40:12.360 | There are examples of 20 and 30 minute NSDR scripts

01:40:16.200 | and yoga nidra scripts.

01:40:17.400 | Some that I particularly like,

01:40:18.660 | we will also provide a link to some of those.

01:40:20.760 | Again, those are completely zero cost for you to explore.

01:40:23.720 | But more important than you follow

01:40:25.060 | any one particular yoga nidra NSDR script

01:40:27.740 | is that you learn to take your body and brain

01:40:30.080 | into these states of limited motion,

01:40:34.000 | elevated dopamine within this particular pathway,

01:40:36.740 | and fairly deep relaxation.

01:40:38.220 | Again, if you happen to fall asleep,

01:40:39.860 | that's not necessarily a bad thing.

01:40:42.060 | Although the idea is that you stay

01:40:43.260 | in a shallow plane of consciousness or sleep,

01:40:46.400 | hence the term non-sleep deep rest.

01:40:49.080 | So in any event, I think this is a very useful practice

01:40:51.840 | that many people could benefit from.

01:40:53.160 | And the fact that it's zero cost and purely behavioral,

01:40:55.500 | I think adds additional benefit

01:40:58.020 | because it's certainly one that people could explore

01:40:59.940 | depending on what amount of time you're willing to commit.

01:41:02.940 | And the research data on this now extend

01:41:05.720 | beyond this one individual paper.

01:41:07.420 | And I think is really exciting because what it says is,

01:41:10.460 | as the title and first line of the paper suggests,

01:41:12.960 | is that we can increase dopamine using specific types

01:41:16.280 | of meditation induced consciousness.

01:41:18.220 | And those increases in dopamine can be used

01:41:21.100 | to increase our ability to be more creative.

01:41:23.340 | Before moving forward, I want to make absolutely clear

01:41:26.360 | how it is that you would use NSDR aka yoga nidra

01:41:30.200 | or similar, the name doesn't really matter after all,

01:41:32.980 | the practice is what matters,

01:41:34.800 | in order to enhance dopamine in this nigrostriatal pathway

01:41:39.320 | and enhance divergent thinking.

01:41:40.940 | The key thing to understand here is that

01:41:43.740 | the period of motionlessness and deep relaxation while awake

01:41:48.800 | increases dopamine in the nigrostriatal pathway,

01:41:52.100 | it increases mental imagery.

01:41:54.520 | That is, it increases access to the bank or the library,

01:41:58.980 | if you will, of possible solutions or elements to engage

01:42:03.320 | in the divergent thinking process.

01:42:05.460 | But divergent thinking itself does not occur

01:42:08.340 | during NSDR aka yoga nidra.

01:42:11.500 | The NSDR and yoga nidra, deep relaxation, meditation,

01:42:15.980 | whatever it is you want to call it,

01:42:17.860 | sets a dopaminergic tone,

01:42:19.880 | and that's actually the appropriate use of the word,

01:42:21.700 | dopaminergic tone.

01:42:22.800 | It raises the baseline of dopamine transmission

01:42:25.540 | in that circuitry that then positions you

01:42:28.900 | to engage in divergent thinking more effectively.

01:42:31.840 | So the idea would be to do anywhere from 10 to 20,

01:42:34.960 | maybe 30 minutes, maybe even as much as an hour,

01:42:37.200 | depending on how much time you had to dedicate

01:42:39.240 | of such a meditation NSDR practice.

01:42:42.060 | And then, not necessarily immediately,

01:42:44.720 | but within the five to 15 minutes following,

01:42:48.300 | then to go into a practice of divergent thinking

01:42:51.500 | and start doing creative exploration.

01:42:53.460 | That is, to start thinking about different ways

01:42:55.500 | to combine existing elements in whatever domain it is

01:42:58.420 | that you want to achieve creativity.

01:43:00.440 | So the point is that the divergent thinking itself

01:43:02.980 | is not occurring during the NSDR or yoga nidra practice.

01:43:07.580 | The NSDR and yoga nidra practice

01:43:09.200 | prepares you for divergent thinking

01:43:11.120 | that you do in the hour or hours that follows.

01:43:14.060 | And just to contrast that with pharmacology,

01:43:16.680 | I am not aware of any specific dopamine-related pharmacology

01:43:20.960 | that would allow us to selectively increase dopamine

01:43:23.540 | in the very pathway

01:43:24.620 | associated with divergent thinking and creativity.

01:43:27.700 | Now, there are forms of pharmacology

01:43:29.640 | that can shift brain neurotransmitters and neuromodulators

01:43:32.780 | in ways that favor creativity.

01:43:34.620 | And this is certainly a topic that we will go into

01:43:36.660 | in more depth in a future episode,

01:43:38.740 | but there's an exciting study

01:43:39.960 | that was performed just this last year

01:43:41.900 | looking at the role of serotonin, another neuromodulator,

01:43:45.980 | in divergent and convergent thinking.

01:43:48.100 | And it turns out that serotonin

01:43:50.940 | underlies a lot of the brain activity

01:43:53.440 | that's responsible for both divergent

01:43:55.700 | and for convergent thinking.

01:43:57.540 | And there's one particular form of pharmacology

01:44:00.620 | which can enhance activation of the serotonergic pathways

01:44:04.000 | associated with the so-called 5-HT,

01:44:06.840 | that's serotonin, 5-HT, that's the abbreviation,

01:44:09.820 | 5-HT2A receptor, serotonin 2A receptor,

01:44:14.500 | in particular brain areas

01:44:16.040 | in ways that favor both divergent and convergent thinking.

01:44:19.180 | And the pharmacologic agent in that case

01:44:21.940 | turns out to be very low dose,

01:44:24.080 | or as some of you may have heard of it referred to

01:44:26.660 | as microdosing of psilocybin.

01:44:29.700 | Now, I do want to say,

01:44:30.540 | because it would be entirely inappropriate

01:44:32.100 | for me to not say this,

01:44:33.720 | that in most areas of the world,

01:44:35.960 | and in particular in the United States,

01:44:37.260 | psilocybin is still illegal.

01:44:39.180 | It is not legal.

01:44:40.380 | In some areas, it has been decriminalized.

01:44:43.100 | And there are a number of different clinical trials

01:44:45.600 | occurring now at Johns Hopkins, at Stanford,

01:44:48.200 | at University of California, San Francisco,

01:44:50.220 | and elsewhere exploring psilocybin

01:44:52.200 | for the treatment of depression, for trauma,

01:44:54.860 | for eating disorders.

01:44:56.640 | Most of those studies focus on macro doses of psilocybin,

01:45:00.180 | not microdosing.

01:45:01.260 | There are far fewer studies of microdosing of psilocybin.

01:45:03.780 | And I do have to point out that psilocybin use

01:45:07.220 | and possession and of course, sale is still illegal.

01:45:10.180 | So I would be remiss if I didn't state that.

01:45:12.700 | However, I will provide a link to the study

01:45:15.120 | that shows that microdosing of psilocybin

01:45:17.660 | for a series of weeks on a daily basis.

01:45:20.420 | So these are dosages of psilocybin

01:45:21.980 | that do not induce hallucination

01:45:24.060 | and do not massively shift mood or internal states

01:45:29.060 | in any way that has people feeling like they are acting

01:45:32.360 | or feeling that much different,

01:45:33.760 | although some people do report a subjective shift,

01:45:36.460 | does seem to increase divergent thinking ability.

01:45:40.200 | But I do want to put a big asterisk,

01:45:42.900 | a highlight and an underlying pen

01:45:45.540 | beneath the statement I'm about to make,

01:45:46.960 | which is that pharmacology of the serotonin system,

01:45:50.420 | just as pharmacology of the dopamine system

01:45:53.560 | is very broadband, it's a shotgun approach.

01:45:56.160 | You're going to hit all the circuits of the brain

01:45:57.940 | that involves serotonin with microdosing psilocybin.

01:46:00.940 | Although it has some selectivity for the 5-HT2A receptor,

01:46:04.260 | it can attach to other receptors as well and act there.

01:46:08.280 | This is the same reason why SSRI,

01:46:09.820 | selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,

01:46:11.940 | can indeed shift mood and appetite,

01:46:14.220 | but it can also shift libido and other things.

01:46:16.680 | It's because there are serotonin receptors everywhere,

01:46:19.460 | or I should say many places,

01:46:21.300 | not just in the areas of the brain

01:46:23.140 | that are associated with mood, for instance.

01:46:25.580 | And as I mentioned before,

01:46:28.180 | agents, whether or not they are recreational

01:46:30.940 | or illicit drugs or prescription drugs or supplements

01:46:34.980 | that increased dopamine will also be broadband

01:46:37.240 | and hit a number of different circuits in parallel.

01:46:39.980 | So this is why I always say

01:46:42.580 | behavioral tools really should come first.

01:46:45.220 | I don't say that because I dislike pharmacology.

01:46:47.540 | I say that because in many cases,

01:46:48.680 | behavioral tools are not only safer and easier to titrate,

01:46:52.020 | to adjust the duration, et cetera, than is pharmacology,

01:46:55.300 | but also because they can sometimes,

01:46:57.620 | as in the case of the study we just described,

01:46:59.300 | afford you more specificity, not less, than pharmacology.

01:47:03.340 | Pharmacology has its place, can be wonderful,

01:47:06.620 | provided it's safe and legal, et cetera,

01:47:08.540 | but it can cause a lot of so-called off-target effects.

01:47:12.220 | So for those of you that are interested

01:47:13.420 | in increasing creativity through pharmacology,

01:47:16.520 | I would say stay tuned for the data

01:47:19.220 | on psilocybin and microdosing psilocybin.

01:47:21.860 | If you are absolutely obsessed with the idea

01:47:25.180 | of microdosing psilocybin for enhancing creativity

01:47:27.700 | and you'd like to go straight to the study,

01:47:29.600 | I will tell you what that study is,

01:47:30.940 | and therefore you can access some of the specifics

01:47:33.600 | in terms of dosaging and protocols, et cetera.

01:47:35.540 | So since I can't help myself,

01:47:36.660 | I'll just very briefly summarize

01:47:38.500 | that microdosing psychedelic study.

01:47:41.160 | The title of the study, which was published in 2018,

01:47:44.340 | is "Exploring the Effect of Microdosing Psychedelics

01:47:46.540 | on Creativity in an Open-Label Natural Setting."

01:47:50.260 | Interesting title.

01:47:51.220 | This was a microdosing event

01:47:53.020 | organized by the Dutch Psychedelic Society.

01:47:55.680 | They examined the effects of psychedelic truffles,

01:47:58.380 | where they knew what sorts of psychedelic compounds

01:48:02.040 | were contained there

01:48:02.880 | on two creativity-related problem-solving tasks,

01:48:06.120 | the picture concept task,

01:48:07.680 | which I don't expect you to recognize or know,

01:48:10.040 | but it assesses convergent thinking

01:48:11.760 | and the alternative uses task,

01:48:14.240 | which I also don't expect you to know,

01:48:15.680 | but is a standard task for assessing divergent thinking.

01:48:18.760 | They tested once before taking a microdose,

01:48:21.160 | and while the effects were expected to be manifested,

01:48:23.880 | they say, oh, interesting.

01:48:25.240 | They use the word manifested in a study of psychedelics.

01:48:27.640 | Science is changing indeed.

01:48:30.380 | In any case, what they found was an enhancement

01:48:34.560 | of creative, that is, divergent and convergent thinking.

01:48:39.340 | Not surprising, given the fact

01:48:41.000 | that the 5-HT2A receptor activity is increased

01:48:46.000 | by microdosing of psilocybin,

01:48:48.440 | and 5-HT2A receptors are present

01:48:51.440 | both on the neural circuits

01:48:52.420 | to underlie divergent and convergent thinking.

01:48:55.520 | So again, this is not a plug for microdosing psilocybin.

01:49:00.340 | This is really in response

01:49:02.300 | to what I know will be a number of different questions

01:49:03.840 | about what sorts of pharmacologic agents

01:49:05.780 | can be used to increase creativity.

01:49:07.960 | So more on that later, and again, we'll provide a link

01:49:10.400 | if you want to read that study in more depth.

01:49:13.900 | I can imagine that a number of you

01:49:15.240 | are probably also wondering about the effects of alcohol

01:49:17.940 | and the effects of cannabis on creativity.

01:49:19.620 | We did a long, in-depth episode all about alcohol

01:49:22.860 | and its effects on health.

01:49:24.840 | The bottom line on alcohol is that in excess

01:49:28.020 | of two drinks per week, you're starting to run

01:49:30.040 | into the cancer-promoting and toxic effects of alcohol.

01:49:33.560 | I didn't choose for the answer to be that,

01:49:36.520 | but that's what the data tell us.

01:49:39.440 | Not telling you you can't drink more than two drinks

01:49:41.800 | per week, I'm just saying that if you're going to do that,

01:49:43.440 | you should really consider offsetting that

01:49:45.960 | with some other behavioral measures,

01:49:47.640 | all discussed in the episode on alcohol,

01:49:49.460 | and despite what people think, there is absolutely zero,

01:49:53.620 | zero evidence that alcohol increases creativity.

01:49:57.280 | However, by way of reducing activation

01:50:00.500 | of the prefrontal cortex, there is some evidence

01:50:03.240 | that alcohol and other substances that reduce

01:50:06.200 | what is called autobiographical scripting,

01:50:08.600 | that is a narrative about ourselves as our self-awareness,

01:50:13.600 | that it can enhance divergent thinking at very low doses.

01:50:17.520 | And this makes sense, divergent thinking involves

01:50:19.580 | remembering certain things that we can use as elements

01:50:22.700 | in the creative process, but suppressing narratives

01:50:25.300 | about what the use of those would mean.

01:50:27.420 | Will people like it?

01:50:28.340 | Will they not like it?

01:50:29.180 | Will it lead to the outcome we want?

01:50:30.520 | Will it won't?

01:50:31.360 | All of that autobiographical scripting involves

01:50:34.260 | the forebrain being very, very active

01:50:36.100 | in specific regions of the forebrain in particular,

01:50:38.940 | and that all needs to be suppressed,

01:50:41.560 | which alcohol in very low doses can accomplish.

01:50:44.480 | But again, that's not a plug for alcohol.

01:50:46.060 | I think behavioral tools would be a much better route,

01:50:48.600 | but it therefore shouldn't be surprising

01:50:51.220 | why some people have used low dose alcohol

01:50:53.240 | in order to engage in the creative process,

01:50:55.480 | because it involves less inhibition or sense of self

01:50:58.040 | that could be detrimental to the divergent thinking process.

01:51:01.040 | Now, with respect to cannabis, I went in depth

01:51:04.180 | into the biology and the various uses, misuses, dangers,

01:51:08.240 | and in some cases, benefits of cannabis use in certain,

01:51:12.140 | the key word there is certain populations.

01:51:14.640 | And I also dove into whether or not cannabis can be used

01:51:18.720 | to increase divergent and convergent thinking.

01:51:20.740 | So that's timestamped in that episode.

01:51:22.240 | I'll refer you to that episode.

01:51:23.500 | But the long and short of it is that many of the ideas

01:51:26.840 | that people come up with when under the influence of cannabis

01:51:30.120 | in particular high THC containing cannabis

01:51:33.540 | does lead to enhanced divergent thinking,

01:51:37.480 | but so enhanced, it turns out,

01:51:40.100 | that oftentimes those ideas can't be constrained

01:51:42.600 | by the convergent thinking process.

01:51:44.140 | In other words, they have lots of ideas that make sense

01:51:47.140 | while under the influence of cannabis,

01:51:49.720 | but that later cannot be implemented

01:51:52.640 | into a coherent framework

01:51:54.600 | that leads to any actual creative endeavor

01:51:58.240 | or creative product.

01:52:00.000 | Or as is often the case with cannabis,

01:52:02.180 | they simply can't remember what they were thinking about.

01:52:04.840 | Anytime there's a discussion about dopamine,

01:52:07.120 | there seems to be a discussion about motivation,

01:52:09.360 | desire, and drive.

01:52:10.480 | And of course that makes sense given the roles of dopamine.

01:52:13.040 | We did an entire episode on dopamine, motivation, and drive.

01:52:15.540 | It's one of our most popular episodes.

01:52:17.460 | Again, you can access that with timestamps

01:52:19.620 | in all formats at hubermanlab.com.

01:52:22.060 | And anytime there's a discussion

01:52:23.540 | about dopamine and motivation,

01:52:26.260 | we also seem to have a lot of questions

01:52:28.300 | about attention and focus and ADHD

01:52:31.540 | or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in particular.

01:52:34.540 | So just as a brief mention, there is a literature,

01:52:37.400 | although not terribly extensive,

01:52:39.440 | a small but strong literature on the relationship

01:52:42.560 | between ADHD and creativity.

01:52:44.980 | And the long and short of that literature

01:52:46.540 | is that people who have ADHD, regardless of age,

01:52:50.620 | do seem to have an ability to focus.

01:52:53.060 | I've mentioned that in the episode on ADHD,

01:52:55.020 | provided that they are interested

01:52:57.340 | in the thing that they are focusing on.

01:52:58.980 | So that runs counter to this idea

01:53:00.400 | that people with ADHD simply can't focus.

01:53:02.480 | They can, but it tends to be a focus

01:53:04.620 | that's selective for things

01:53:05.580 | that they are very excited about or interested in,

01:53:07.980 | as opposed to a general ability to focus.

01:53:10.980 | What's also highly underappreciated

01:53:13.800 | is that people who have ADHD

01:53:16.460 | oftentimes are very effective at divergent thinking,

01:53:19.960 | but are less effective at convergent thinking.

01:53:22.860 | What this tells us is that people with ADHD

01:53:25.060 | can often have excellent novel and indeed creative ideas,

01:53:29.580 | but that the implementation of those creative ideas

01:53:32.260 | is sometimes challenged.

01:53:33.380 | And that's one reason to explore rational pharmacology,

01:53:36.180 | nutrition, supplementation, et cetera.

01:53:38.000 | Those are all things to explore

01:53:39.480 | in concert with, or I should say,

01:53:41.660 | in working closely with a board certified physician

01:53:44.200 | or ideally psychiatrist expert in ADHD.

01:53:46.960 | You can also check out the episode that we did on ADHD.

01:53:49.160 | There are a lot of tools there,

01:53:50.560 | a lot of science mentioned there to support those tools.

01:53:53.200 | Again, you can find that at hubermanlab.com.

01:53:55.180 | But I did think it was important to point out,

01:53:57.200 | even if briefly, that having ADHD

01:53:59.880 | is not a barrier to creativity.

01:54:01.960 | In fact, may actually be an enhanced portal to creativity,

01:54:05.800 | but that it doesn't allow people to access the convergent

01:54:10.120 | thinking that allows creative ideas to be implemented

01:54:12.680 | into specific strategies, pressure tested,

01:54:14.920 | and eventually delivered in the form of a final product

01:54:17.880 | of music, art, et cetera.

01:54:19.780 | That is not to say that people with ADHD

01:54:21.400 | cannot accomplish that,

01:54:23.080 | but that it is going to require some additional steps

01:54:25.640 | and protocols in order to enhance convergent thinking.

01:54:28.720 | And that episode and the episode that we did on focus,

01:54:32.000 | and in particular tools to enhance focus,

01:54:34.440 | is very much directed at ways to enhance convergent thinking.

01:54:38.260 | So if you have ADHD or know somebody who does,

01:54:40.440 | and you're interested in the creative process,

01:54:42.060 | we're focusing generally,

01:54:43.260 | please check out the episodes that I mentioned.

01:54:45.580 | Now there's also a small,

01:54:46.700 | but nonetheless very exciting literature

01:54:48.640 | on the relationship between physical movement

01:54:50.700 | and divergent thinking.

01:54:52.240 | This should come as no surprise to us.

01:54:54.320 | As mentioned many times now in this episode,

01:54:56.540 | the nigrostriatal pathway involved in divergent thinking

01:54:59.080 | and it involves dopamine is also responsible for eye blinks

01:55:02.520 | and for movements of the limbs of the body

01:55:05.440 | in very deliberate ways.

01:55:07.440 | This tells us that there's some direct

01:55:10.240 | or maybe indirect relationship

01:55:11.760 | between movement of the body and divergent thinking.

01:55:15.320 | And despite the fact that it's only a few studies,

01:55:17.240 | there have been some studies of whether or not

01:55:19.400 | people are able to engage in divergent thinking

01:55:21.640 | more effectively when they are doing things like pacing

01:55:25.000 | or walking, and this could be on a treadmill

01:55:27.600 | or back and forth across the room.

01:55:29.160 | And in fact, that is absolutely the case.

01:55:31.320 | If you're somebody like myself

01:55:32.960 | who tends to have their best ideas,

01:55:36.300 | not saying that my ideas are always terrific,

01:55:38.240 | but among the ideas I have,

01:55:40.020 | some of the better ones arrive to me

01:55:41.860 | while on my long Sunday run,

01:55:44.040 | I tend to do a long run or hike on Sundays,

01:55:46.680 | sometimes with a light weight vest

01:55:48.460 | or something of that sort.

01:55:49.600 | But when I'm in a state of essentially not directing

01:55:52.720 | my attention to any one thing in my external environment,

01:55:55.940 | this is extremely key for reasons that now should be obvious

01:55:58.560 | anytime we are directing our attention

01:55:59.920 | to a visual target or an auditory target,

01:56:02.900 | we are not as able to engage in divergent thinking.

01:56:05.400 | This is why I will sometimes listen to podcasts

01:56:08.280 | or to audio books while I go on these runs,

01:56:10.040 | but for portions of these runs or hikes,

01:56:11.700 | I tend to turn those off and just focus on the movement

01:56:15.040 | and focus on not focusing on anything in particular.

01:56:17.800 | And oftentimes I will stop and write down ideas

01:56:20.100 | that suddenly or seemingly suddenly appear to me

01:56:24.040 | or geyser to the surface, I'll have an idea.

01:56:25.820 | Sometimes those are good ideas, sometimes less good ideas.

01:56:28.440 | The fact that that happens for me and the fact that

01:56:30.520 | many people are pacers or runners

01:56:33.000 | or come up with their best ideas while in the shower

01:56:35.380 | or while engaging in activities that don't require

01:56:37.960 | a lot of sensory attention to one specific location,

01:56:41.160 | either visual or auditory, et cetera,

01:56:43.960 | that is because it engages these nigrostriatal pathways

01:56:48.280 | through movement, which then opens up this library of ideas

01:56:51.780 | and allows the intersection of different ideas

01:56:54.040 | that normally would be constrained to separate categories.

01:56:57.560 | One way to think about this by analogy would be that,

01:57:00.600 | you know, when I was a kid, you'd go to the library

01:57:02.440 | and nowadays you just go online,

01:57:03.760 | but the different pages of different books

01:57:05.680 | on different topics are kept distinct from one another,

01:57:08.880 | that is bound by different book covers and bookends,

01:57:12.720 | different shelves in the library.

01:57:14.960 | It's as if different pages and elements from those books

01:57:17.080 | are now being combined in a pseudo random,

01:57:19.880 | not random, but in a pseudo random way.

01:57:22.600 | And in that combination, new possibilities about ways

01:57:26.060 | that information could be combined and implemented

01:57:28.780 | start to arise.

01:57:29.980 | So the tool that emerges from this is very simple

01:57:32.320 | and it won't necessarily apply to everybody.

01:57:34.800 | But if you are somebody who finds that just sitting

01:57:36.800 | in a chair and trying to be creative is very challenging,

01:57:39.720 | some of you might benefit from, for instance,

01:57:41.600 | if you are engaging in writing or you want to write,

01:57:44.680 | to talk into the voice recorder of your phone while walking

01:57:48.000 | or simply walking and not attending

01:57:49.720 | to any one specific thing visually or through headphones.

01:57:52.760 | And then as ideas surface, seemingly out of nowhere,

01:57:57.420 | which is how it happens,

01:57:58.680 | that you could either put them into your phone

01:58:00.340 | by voice dictation, or you could type them out if you like.

01:58:02.780 | The key thing is to not be distracted by other things

01:58:05.060 | in your phone, not to start going onto social media

01:58:07.140 | or doing phone calls or looking at text messages,

01:58:09.460 | because that by definition is going to take you out of this,

01:58:12.960 | what the biologists call a pseudo random walk.

01:58:15.980 | And this pseudo random element is extremely important.

01:58:19.940 | We know, for instance, that many circuits within the brain

01:58:22.620 | have what's called dedicated point-to-point wiring.

01:58:25.140 | So for instance, the brain circuits

01:58:26.780 | that govern your breathing,

01:58:27.880 | the brain circuits that govern your heartbeat,

01:58:29.500 | the brain circuits that govern your specific movements

01:58:32.280 | once you were an adult and allow

01:58:33.980 | for smooth directed movement are very precise,

01:58:36.880 | very little slop, if any, in the wiring.

01:58:39.580 | However, there are aspects of your brain circuitry,

01:58:43.380 | yours and everybody else's, I should say,

01:58:46.720 | that are maintained into adulthood

01:58:48.660 | that include a lot of extra wiring.

01:58:52.020 | And these are fine wires, they're not the major highways

01:58:54.940 | between different areas, if you will.

01:58:56.460 | So sort of like Google Maps has highways and streets

01:58:58.740 | and little passages and alleys,

01:59:01.860 | but it's as if there's a little web

01:59:03.660 | of additional possible pathways cast over that entire thing.

01:59:07.620 | The human brain maintains such webs of possible passage.

01:59:11.780 | And it's only during activities such as walking, running,

01:59:16.100 | cycling, swimming, hiking, pacing, et cetera,

01:59:21.740 | that the activation of those pseudo-random pathways

01:59:24.780 | starts to ramp up.

01:59:26.220 | So this is a purely behavioral approach

01:59:29.000 | to engaging different elements within neural networks

01:59:32.180 | that normally would not communicate with one another

01:59:34.320 | when we are completely still.

01:59:35.940 | So again, the practices that I talked about earlier

01:59:38.220 | of being completely still to raise dopamine

01:59:40.060 | and enhance divergent thinking,

01:59:41.500 | those, I just want to reemphasize,

01:59:44.940 | are designed to position you, to ready you

01:59:48.120 | to engage in the kinds of activities

01:59:49.860 | like walking and pacing, et cetera,

01:59:51.820 | that best facilitate divergent thinking.

01:59:54.820 | So if you are somebody who wants to enhance

01:59:56.740 | divergent thinking, I would encourage you

01:59:58.720 | to explore how different patterns of movement,

02:00:00.940 | in particular patterns of movement

02:00:02.080 | that don't require any conscious attention

02:00:04.140 | to any one specific thing,

02:00:06.020 | allow you to access new ideas

02:00:08.620 | and new ways of combining existing elements

02:00:10.900 | in whatever domain it is you want to be creative.

02:00:13.580 | Now, this is also an opportunity to underscore

02:00:15.900 | something I said back at the beginning,

02:00:17.220 | which is you are not going to come up

02:00:18.980 | with great works of music if you don't understand chords

02:00:22.660 | and melodies and notes and music.

02:00:25.000 | Those basic elements have to be built up

02:00:26.860 | through some sort of formal

02:00:28.420 | or at least rigorous or regular training,

02:00:30.380 | in the same way that you're not going to take a walk

02:00:32.200 | and then suddenly be able to paint an incredible picture

02:00:34.860 | if you have no painting ability.

02:00:36.100 | That is not going to happen.

02:00:38.000 | What I'm talking about here are ways

02:00:39.220 | to enhance your capacity for divergent thinking,

02:00:41.480 | such as NSDR, and ways to engage in divergent thinking,

02:00:45.620 | such as through certain forms of movement

02:00:47.900 | that don't require a lot of conscious attention

02:00:49.860 | to your surroundings or any one specific sensory target.

02:00:54.240 | And in doing so, enhancing your ability

02:00:56.900 | to be more creative in a domain

02:00:58.780 | for which you already have some degree of skill

02:01:01.620 | or even mastery.

02:01:02.680 | Now, in keeping with the theme

02:01:03.720 | of how to enhance our creativity,

02:01:06.220 | there's a very exciting and yet parallel literature

02:01:10.280 | to the literature that I've been describing thus far.

02:01:12.900 | Now, I promise you that I'm not going to open up

02:01:14.680 | an entire library of new information related

02:01:17.980 | to neural circuits and so forth,

02:01:19.760 | but I would be remiss if I didn't mention

02:01:21.900 | this parallel literature,

02:01:23.300 | because it speaks very specifically

02:01:24.980 | to some important practices that we can all use

02:01:28.240 | in order to enhance creativity

02:01:29.700 | and to do so the first time and every time.

02:01:32.660 | And this is really because certain scientists out there

02:01:35.180 | have really gone through the trouble,

02:01:37.220 | I should even say the painstaking trouble,

02:01:39.140 | of really trying to dissect what the creative process is,

02:01:42.080 | both for individuals and in groups or even in pairs.

02:01:46.580 | And so what I'm about to tell you

02:01:48.060 | is beautifully encapsulated in an article entitled,

02:01:51.720 | "A New Method for Training Creativity,

02:01:54.020 | Narrative as an Alternative to Divergent Thinking."

02:01:57.400 | So again, we've been talking about divergent thinking,

02:01:59.460 | that's one pathway into the creative process,

02:02:01.820 | but there are others as well.

02:02:03.320 | And as it turns out, they're not so distinct

02:02:05.760 | in terms of the underlying brain mechanisms.

02:02:07.760 | Nonetheless, let me describe briefly

02:02:09.480 | how narrative can be used to train creativity

02:02:12.420 | and to become more creative.

02:02:14.120 | And in order to do that,

02:02:15.180 | I'd like to just briefly paraphrase

02:02:16.860 | or read from the first paragraph of this paper.

02:02:19.100 | So what I'm about to read are the author's words, not mine.

02:02:22.260 | Quote, "Here's a paradox.

02:02:24.580 | According to current research,

02:02:25.860 | young children are more imaginatively creative than adults."

02:02:29.500 | And indeed that is true, by the way.

02:02:31.620 | "Yet also according to current research,

02:02:34.140 | creativity's main neural engine is divergent thinking,

02:02:37.720 | which relies on memory and logical association,

02:02:40.820 | two tasks at which young children underperform adults."

02:02:44.620 | That is, children are not as good

02:02:46.940 | at divergent thinking as adults are.

02:02:48.780 | So how could it be, the authors are asking,

02:02:51.220 | that children are more imaginative

02:02:53.340 | and thus more creative than adults?

02:02:55.860 | This can only mean that there are alternate pathways

02:02:59.380 | to creativity, and indeed that is the case.

02:03:02.300 | And so what this paper really explores

02:03:05.400 | is other ways to access creativity

02:03:07.620 | and what they describe is what's called narrative theory.

02:03:10.800 | And there's a number of different aspects

02:03:12.440 | to this narrative theory,

02:03:14.700 | but they agree that the standard definition of creativity

02:03:18.200 | is the same one that we were talking about before.

02:03:20.420 | So we're not talking about

02:03:21.240 | a different form of creativity here,

02:03:22.600 | we're talking about a different way to access creativity.

02:03:25.200 | They describe the standard definition of creativity

02:03:27.700 | as quote, "The ability to generate novel ideas

02:03:30.240 | that are useful."

02:03:31.080 | So the commonly accepted one.

02:03:32.960 | And what they cite as the basis for narrative theory

02:03:36.800 | is this breakthrough finding in the 1950s.

02:03:39.100 | This is the work of Guilford.

02:03:40.400 | Some people out there might be familiar with it.

02:03:42.040 | I was not at the outset of researching this episode.

02:03:45.000 | What this theory from Guilford essentially states

02:03:47.520 | is that there are different intellectual capacities

02:03:49.640 | that are not captured by standard IQ tests.

02:03:51.600 | I think that's generally accepted nowadays.

02:03:53.320 | We know there's emotional intelligence,

02:03:55.220 | we know there's standard IQ, et cetera.

02:03:57.720 | But the important element to understand

02:04:00.200 | is that these authors were able to trace back the idea

02:04:04.360 | of narrative training as a way to enhance creativity

02:04:08.880 | long before Guilford in the 1950s,

02:04:11.000 | all the way back to Aristotle.

02:04:13.080 | So this is incredible.

02:04:14.140 | Narrative theory was actually birthed in 335 BCE

02:04:18.800 | in his writing called "Poetics,"

02:04:20.640 | which I think is incredible, at least to me,

02:04:23.960 | that people long before us were thinking about creativity

02:04:27.280 | and what goes into creativity.

02:04:29.120 | And what Aristotle said, what Guilford then elaborated on,

02:04:32.260 | and what the authors of this paper further elaborate on

02:04:36.360 | and actually have developed training protocols for

02:04:38.760 | is the idea that there are three elements that we can use

02:04:41.400 | in order to enhance creativity.

02:04:42.840 | And those three elements are what's called world building.

02:04:47.060 | I'll explain what these are in a moment.

02:04:48.640 | Perspective shifting and action generating.

02:04:52.340 | And right off the bat,

02:04:53.940 | the word action should raise a flag for you.

02:04:56.640 | And by that, I mean a positive flag,

02:04:58.760 | because once again, we are back into the world

02:05:01.040 | and therefore the neural circuits of movement and motion.

02:05:04.440 | Okay, so three elements of world building,

02:05:06.920 | perspective shifting and active generating

02:05:09.460 | are what make up this narrative approach to creativity.

02:05:12.300 | And I should mention that these authors and others

02:05:14.380 | are using such approach with companies,

02:05:16.680 | with groups, with individuals.

02:05:17.940 | So this is used in a bunch of different contexts

02:05:19.880 | to approach and enhance different forms of creativity.

02:05:23.820 | So let's talk first about world building techniques.

02:05:27.200 | This is going to be immediately familiar to you

02:05:30.660 | when you hear it.

02:05:31.580 | But one of the key elements of creativity is to,

02:05:35.400 | at the outset, come up with some idea that makes sense

02:05:39.600 | or is attractive to you about how the world is different

02:05:42.740 | inside of your creative endeavor.

02:05:44.880 | So for those that write science fiction

02:05:47.280 | or think about science fiction,

02:05:48.700 | there's some obvious aspects to this.

02:05:50.920 | But for those of you that don't,

02:05:52.240 | maybe you come up with a narrative, for instance,

02:05:54.200 | in the context of storytelling that in your world,

02:05:57.420 | we are the house cats

02:05:59.460 | and the cats are actually the ones

02:06:01.980 | that are the curators of the earth.

02:06:03.380 | Okay, so right there, there is a conceptual shift

02:06:06.860 | that the world in which whatever creative idea

02:06:09.640 | is going to emerge is entirely different

02:06:11.780 | than the one that we actually live in.

02:06:13.460 | So that sets a certain number of important constraints.

02:06:15.940 | It means certain things are now possible,

02:06:17.440 | other things are not possible

02:06:18.620 | that are very different from the world that we live in.

02:06:21.260 | You can see the parallels here

02:06:22.700 | to kind of childhood imagination

02:06:24.420 | where essentially anything can happen in the child's mind

02:06:27.100 | because they are unconstrained.

02:06:28.640 | The second element is this perspective shifting techniques.

02:06:31.520 | And the idea here is that not only are we supposed

02:06:35.560 | to have the reader or the listener or the observer or us

02:06:39.960 | explore for creativity and develop a creative idea

02:06:43.560 | by thinking differently, right,

02:06:45.700 | which is kind of a generic term,

02:06:46.920 | how do we actually think differently?

02:06:48.560 | But rather than just say,

02:06:50.620 | take the perspective of somebody else

02:06:52.640 | in terms of what they would see or do or say or think,

02:06:56.020 | rather, we are supposed to think about their underlying

02:06:58.680 | motivation so we could do the world shift,

02:07:01.720 | that is the world structure shift from step one.

02:07:03.900 | And then in step two, you would ask yourself,

02:07:06.420 | okay, rather than write about or think about

02:07:09.940 | or move from the perspective of myself,

02:07:12.300 | let's say you're feeling particularly happy that day,

02:07:14.760 | you'd say, you know, I'm actually going to take

02:07:16.600 | the perspective of somebody who's angry,

02:07:18.560 | but rather than just act angry,

02:07:20.660 | I'm going to think about what their motivation

02:07:22.400 | for being angry is.

02:07:23.300 | Maybe they had a breakup, maybe they were jealous,

02:07:26.200 | maybe somebody had wronged them in some way,

02:07:28.360 | maybe they're just generally angry at the world

02:07:30.200 | for whatever reason,

02:07:31.160 | and then operate from that motivational stance.

02:07:33.740 | And this is a very interesting and powerful step

02:07:36.960 | because what it really captures,

02:07:38.340 | at least as viewed by me, the neuroscientist,

02:07:41.100 | is it captures a whole set of neural circuits

02:07:43.020 | about what that motivational state means

02:07:45.460 | because motivational states dictate a huge number

02:07:48.360 | of possible different outcomes,

02:07:49.880 | but they really constrain the number of different actions

02:07:52.880 | and outcomes that any of us would engage in.

02:07:55.120 | Rather than saying, I'm going to view the world

02:07:56.860 | the way that someone else would view the world,

02:07:58.600 | by stating that we are going to be motivated

02:08:00.660 | by their set of motivations and not our own,

02:08:03.280 | it includes a lot more possibilities

02:08:05.360 | and yet not an infinite number of possibilities.

02:08:07.820 | They are constrained in a logical way,

02:08:09.600 | which is one of the key elements of creativity.

02:08:12.160 | And then this third element,

02:08:13.400 | which is action-generating techniques,

02:08:16.400 | is a really cool one that you will immediately notice

02:08:19.440 | implications for the workplace,

02:08:21.220 | which is forced collaboration.

02:08:23.360 | So inside of this thing that we're building here,

02:08:25.760 | this kind of story,

02:08:26.800 | you create a novel rule for the world

02:08:30.340 | that your story is going to exist in,

02:08:32.000 | or your music is going to exist in,

02:08:33.480 | or your sport will exist in.

02:08:35.040 | Then you create this perspective shift

02:08:38.560 | where you take on the motivation of someone else

02:08:41.720 | different than you.

02:08:42.960 | And then you force collaboration between that person

02:08:46.040 | who has this alternate motivation, different from you,

02:08:49.200 | and someone else who has an entirely different motivation.

02:08:51.680 | And in doing so, you create these kind of

02:08:54.040 | what are called the creative collisions.

02:08:55.620 | Now they're collisions because they're crossing one another

02:08:58.060 | and something new has to emerge from them.

02:08:59.860 | They could be antagonistic.

02:09:01.480 | They could be arguments, fighting, physical,

02:09:03.280 | or verbal or otherwise.

02:09:04.620 | They could be synergistic.

02:09:06.300 | They could take on any number of different forms

02:09:07.960 | depending on the motivations and the individuals

02:09:10.280 | that are involved.

02:09:11.480 | But even though I just described this in fairly top contour,

02:09:15.160 | what I just described is actually the core elements

02:09:18.440 | of any story or any creative endeavor.

02:09:20.880 | It's just that many stories are from the perspective

02:09:23.080 | of what we already know and believe

02:09:25.680 | and think the world to be.

02:09:27.680 | And our own perspective and the actions that we would take

02:09:32.120 | given that world and that perspective.

02:09:34.100 | Whereas if we want to be creative,

02:09:36.200 | we want to think outside of our usual framework

02:09:38.700 | and yet using elements that exist within us, right?

02:09:41.200 | No one has to tell us the creative narrative.

02:09:43.180 | We're trying to come up with it on our own.

02:09:45.160 | We want to essentially think in a childlike way.

02:09:47.920 | How do children think?

02:09:49.100 | Well, they have new, different, or entirely novel concepts

02:09:54.060 | about how the world works, but those are bounded.

02:09:57.200 | And this is a key word.

02:09:58.120 | Those are bounded.

02:09:58.960 | They're not infinite.

02:09:59.780 | It's not that anything can happen, right?

02:10:01.900 | Some kids will say we can fly

02:10:03.280 | and you can shoot lasers out of your eyes.

02:10:05.040 | You can do all sorts of things.

02:10:05.880 | There are unicorns, a candy falling from the sky.

02:10:08.160 | At some point, if you don't bound the change in the world,

02:10:12.520 | it just becomes pure chaos.

02:10:13.880 | And even children don't do that.

02:10:15.040 | So we need to bound the change

02:10:16.580 | and yet create some alternate universe, if you will,

02:10:20.220 | in which the story takes place or the creation of any kind.

02:10:23.900 | Doesn't have to be a story takes place.

02:10:25.300 | Then there has to be a perspective shift.

02:10:26.760 | And this is very useful.

02:10:27.640 | This is actually a tool that we can all use

02:10:30.240 | of trying to take the perspective of others,

02:10:32.360 | but not just asking what they would feel or think or do,

02:10:36.140 | but ask what is their motivation in life generally?

02:10:39.700 | Or what kind of mood stance or goal stance are they taking?

02:10:43.160 | Are they trying to extract from others?

02:10:44.760 | Are they trying to give to others?

02:10:46.200 | Are they very altruistic, et cetera, et cetera?

02:10:48.380 | And then you take that individual

02:10:50.260 | and you do that also for another individual

02:10:52.940 | or group of individuals.

02:10:53.920 | And you start thinking about

02:10:55.140 | how those different individuals,

02:10:57.200 | because of their different motivational states,

02:10:59.260 | would engage at the level of action,

02:11:01.180 | what they would do, what they would say,

02:11:02.440 | would they mate, would they fight, et cetera, et cetera.

02:11:05.600 | You think of any story,

02:11:06.720 | the story of "Star Wars," the Greek myths,

02:11:09.680 | you think of any story that has been created,

02:11:13.360 | which we consider great and novel works,

02:11:16.320 | and you start to find these three elements,

02:11:19.200 | world-building, perspective-shifting,

02:11:21.520 | and action-generating techniques.

02:11:23.320 | And so while this is, again, just a broad contour

02:11:27.320 | of what this narrative approach involves,

02:11:29.240 | I think it's a very important and very exciting one

02:11:31.600 | because it gives us a formula, right?

02:11:33.400 | We already know that divergent thinking

02:11:34.980 | and convergent thinking are both elements

02:11:36.600 | to the creative process.

02:11:38.460 | This is suggesting that whether or not

02:11:41.120 | it involves divergent thinking or not,

02:11:43.080 | these authors seem to think this is distinct

02:11:44.840 | from divergent thinking,

02:11:46.040 | that capturing some of the elements of creativity

02:11:48.640 | that are present in childhood,

02:11:49.920 | but that then tend to disappear

02:11:51.280 | as we start to assume identity, build identity,

02:11:53.760 | and understand rules about the actual world we live in,

02:11:56.680 | all of those basic elements of early childhood creativity

02:12:00.280 | can be reawakened, and in fact, they have data to support

02:12:03.220 | the fact that they can be reawakened in adults

02:12:05.200 | in meaningful ways that can lead to new product design,

02:12:07.960 | new workplace interactions, and on and on.

02:12:10.700 | That I find very exciting.

02:12:12.720 | And as a consequence, I do intend to do an entire episode

02:12:16.800 | at some point on narrative and storytelling

02:12:19.440 | and the role of narrative and storytelling,

02:12:21.280 | not just for sake of creativity,

02:12:22.660 | but also for accessing neuroplasticity

02:12:25.920 | and for enhancing memory and so on.

02:12:27.860 | There's an entire landscape of literature

02:12:29.520 | and exciting tools and things to understand there.

02:12:31.880 | But in the meantime, we will provide a link to this paper.

02:12:34.880 | And for those of you that choose not to access the paper,

02:12:37.360 | simply understanding these three aspects of narrative

02:12:40.920 | as an alternative to accessing creativity,

02:12:43.120 | that is a dedicated and well understood

02:12:47.040 | or established world shift that you choose,

02:12:49.420 | perspective shifting and taking on the motivation of others,

02:12:52.660 | and creating some sort of landscape of exploration

02:12:56.080 | for what sorts of interactions would occur

02:12:57.760 | between that individual or groups of individuals

02:12:59.680 | and other individuals that have other motivations

02:13:02.600 | and yet are still living in this alternate world.

02:13:05.880 | Those three elements we now know can be combined

02:13:08.920 | into what you or I or anyone

02:13:11.580 | would consider important creative works.

02:13:13.880 | So today we discussed creativity,

02:13:16.380 | this absolutely fascinating aspect to human brain function

02:13:20.520 | that has allowed us as a species to develop everything

02:13:23.760 | from great works of art and music

02:13:26.040 | to technological innovations that allow us to fly

02:13:29.160 | and allow us to access people all over the world

02:13:31.200 | through little screen devices that we carry around

02:13:33.440 | in our pockets and on and on.

02:13:35.600 | As I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode,

02:13:38.800 | I find creativity to be one of the most fascinating aspects

02:13:42.560 | of brain function, and in particular,

02:13:45.080 | because we don't actually know

02:13:47.080 | what the upper limits of creativity are,

02:13:48.800 | and yet we understand that there are certain bounds,

02:13:52.880 | there are certain requirements.

02:13:54.040 | And the key requirement for creativity

02:13:56.160 | is this aspect of utility.

02:13:57.640 | Now that doesn't necessarily mean

02:13:59.160 | that for something to be considered creative,

02:14:01.200 | it has to be useful in the practical sense,

02:14:04.320 | but it does seem that for something

02:14:06.160 | to be considered truly creative or especially creative

02:14:09.960 | in some cases, that it revealed to us something fundamental

02:14:13.420 | about the way that we or the world works.

02:14:16.660 | We discussed some of the neural circuits

02:14:18.000 | that underlie the different aspects of creativity,

02:14:20.120 | in particular, divergent and convergent thinking,

02:14:22.120 | as well as narrative building,

02:14:23.880 | and some of the tools and steps that can allow us

02:14:26.480 | to better access divergent thinking and convergent thinking.

02:14:30.440 | And those tools include behavioral tools

02:14:32.680 | as well as pharmacology.

02:14:34.480 | And we talked about narrative building

02:14:36.680 | as a way to reawaken, or I should say,

02:14:39.000 | re-access the childhood creativity that did indeed exist

02:14:43.260 | in all of us at some point in time.

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The Science of Creativity & How to Enhance Creative Innovation | Huberman Lab Podcast 103

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