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SCIEN TIFIC COMMENTARY

Capturing creativity

Creativity is a mental journey between ideas or concepts

that involves either a novel route or a novel destination.

Many underlying causes have been suggested, including

divine intervention and serendipity, but an adequate

account must consider its neurobiological bases (Zeki,

2001). Brain theories of creativity might be divided in the

broadest terms into global theories (based on universal

aspects of brain function or universal influences on it) and

local theories that emphasize certain components. Links

between creativity and intelligence (Hofstadter, 1995;Sternberg, 2001), transmitter function (Beversdorf et al.,

1999; Schrag and Trimble, 2001) or mood (Ludwig, 1994)

all arguably reflect global mechanisms. In terms of local

theories, there is ongoing debate about the relative

importance of frontal and posterior association cortices

(Heilman et al., 2003) and the relative importance of the

right and left hemisphere (Amaducci et al., 2002). Other

structures that have been emphasized include the cerebel-

lum, albeit as part of a broader network (Chavez-Eakle

et al., 2007).Particular problems with the study of natural creativity

are the fact that a given creative event is unique to any

individual and the restriction of creativity to particularcircumstances; the creative process that led Einstein to

develop a special theory of relativity only happened once

(further rehearsal of the concepts does not constitute

creativity) and we would not dispute his creative genius

based on a consideration of his violin playing. The creative

process is therefore not well suited to the use of traditional

psychological methods based on the observation of group

performance over multiple trials in stereotyped circum-

stances. Specific forms of creativity can be studied using

imaging in constrained environments (Geake and Hansen,

2005; Chavez-Eakle et al., 2007; Mashal et al., 2007), but

such studies beg the question whether natural creativity canbe captured by tests that depend on particular interpreta-

tions of its generic basis. In this issue of Brain, Seeley and

colleagues take a more ethological approach by observing

the effect of focal degenerative brain disease on the natural

expression of creativity. They describe a fascinating example

of brain degeneration not only sparing creativity but being

preceded by increased creative behaviour.The creative output of a scientist and artist with primary

progressive aphasia (PPA) is described and related to the

distribution of brain atrophy measured prospectively by

voxel-based morphometry. This was made possible by the

existence of MRI scans before the onset of aphasia that were

carried out to follow an acoustic neuroma. The patient

started painting at the age of forty-six and the paintings

evolved into complex cross-modal representations by the

age of fifty-two, eight years before any speech symptoms.

Her painting is assessed from before the onset of aphasia to

a stage when she was still painting despite being mute.

What is particularly interesting in this case is the focus thatthe patient developed on the work of another progressive

aphasia sufferer, Maurice Ravel (Amaducci et al., 2002),

before the onset of her illness: a painting based on Bolero

executed before the aphasia converts the repetitive musical

form into a repetitive visual form. Another painting

produced before the aphasia demonstrates a different

conversion, from mathematics, in which the number pi is

represented in visual form. During the illness itself the

painting style became increasingly close to life. An evolving

pattern of left frontal and temporal cortical degeneration

associated with her aphasia is demonstrated in the

accompanying voxel-based morphometry, with associated

increases in grey matter in the right parietal cortex. Thebehavioural data are interpreted by the authors in terms of

an increase in transmodal creativity realized by intact right

posterior mechanisms that are released from inhibition by

the frontal cortex.The work raises a number of interesting questions, the

most central of which is whether the study really

demonstrates increased creativity corresponding to the

disease process? The early paintings demonstrate a form

of conversion of acoustic or mathematical structure to

visual form beyond simple translation and evidence true

creativity. However, peak creativity defined in terms of the

cross-modal work occurred eight years before the speechsymptoms and structural brain changes. When the disease

was established she exhibited what is arguably a less creative

style. That might still represent a gain of function compared

to when she did not paint, although measuring the

creativity of her previous scientific work is even more

difficult than judging the creativity of her artistic work.

However, the other cases of increased creativity in early

PPA reported by this group argue against coincidence,

and it is possible that the sensitivity of voxel-based

doi:10.1093/brain/awm310 Brain (2008), 131, 6^7

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morphometry is not sufficient to show early structuralcorrelates of disease at a time when the suggested gain offunction was most marked.

How can we define creativity in a robust way? Themethodology of arts criticism leads to crude metrics such asthe ranking of creative endeavours, likened by one observer

to World Federation Wrestling for middle-class people(Costello, 2003). That is not a basis for useful metrics thatmight correlate with brain morphology. In the laboratory,quantification of creativity in the form of fluid analogies ispossible when the input to subjects and output from themis constrained (Geake and Hansen, 2005), but how can wequantify spontaneous creativity? Quantification of creativitybased on information theory is conceivable, based oncharacterizing the novelty and complexity of either conceptsor the relationship between them. Bolero would notactually come out highly in an assessment of creativitybased on information theory, due to the repetitivestructure, whilst the silent piano piece 433 by John

Cage corresponds to a baud rate that can only ever bebeaten. In visual art the use of information theory to definecreativity would probably suggest that photorealism wasmore creative than cubism, whilst in literature the use ofrelated measures like automated textual analysis (Garrardet al., 2005) might place Hemingway at the bottom of thecreative heap. But the ultimate futility of possible informa-tion theoretic approaches is highlighted by a considerationof the richest possible creative outputs based on metricsderived from it: acoustic noise, visual noise or randomwords. Information theory can never capture the holy grailof creativity: beautiful concepts, ideas or images, which canbe very simple. A reverse view of creativity is an ability tointroduce order into the randomness of nature (E. Hoffer,unpublished). But, at the limit, that takes us back to 433as the ultimate expression of creativity. We are left, then,with an imbalance between the anatomical precision ofvoxel-based morphometry and the absence of any robustmeasure of creativity to which this might be related.

If the association between this pattern of brain structuralchange and creativity is accepted, it raises further questionsabout the adequacy of local theories of creativity. These all

emphasize areas of association cortex that mediate connec-tions between cortical areas (or the cerebellum as asubcortical structure with extensive cortical connections).From first principles, posterior association cortex might beadequate for the abstraction between symbolic formscommunicated by the senses, whilst abstraction between

ideas could involve frontal association cortex. The currentstudy suggests that isolated posterior mechanisms are not

an adequate basis for creativity expressed through abstrac-tions between sense data.

Timothy D. GriffithsCognitive Neurology Clinic, Newcastle General Hospital

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