Creative people daydream more, even while concentrating

In 1966, my mentor and colleague, Jerome L. Singer , published his seminal book, Daydreaming: An Introduction to the Experimental Study of Inner Experience . Since then, the scientific study of daydreaming has taken off. A key theme that has emerged is the striking continuity between nightdreaming and daydreaming and the ability of creative people to harness this continuity. Neuroscience has allowed us to take this research to new, creative heights that were unimaginable when Singer published his book in ‘66.

When most of us fall asleep, the brain network that involves attention to the outside world (the working memory network consisting primarily of the lateral frontal and parietal cortices) deactivates and our default brain network  (medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices) takes over. The discovery of the default brain network is important, as it involves various aspects of our self, such as our self-representations, dreams, imagination, current concerns, autobiographical memory and perspective-taking ability. Those with higher default network activity during rest have a tendency to daydream more frequently, which makes sense if one thinks of the default network as involving our inner stream of consciousness.

When most of us awaken, our working memory brain network re-engages, and our default brain network recedes into the background. In most people, the working memory network and the default network anticorrelate with each other, meaning that when one network is activated, the other is deactivated. This is generally a good thing! Proper connectivity (i.e., communication) between the two networks allows people to know when it’s important to distinguish between pure fantasy (their inner stream of consciousness) and “reality” (the external world).

But that’s most people. Creative folks and those with schizophrenia tend to have an overactive default network. Prior research has suggested that the thing that seems to differentiate creative but functional individuals from those in a mental institution is that the functional folks appear to have the ability to engage both brain networks, and they can use their working memory network to control their attention. Those who lose grip on reality and become paranoid and delusional have let the floodgates down, so to speak, letting too much of their default network control their attention.

A recent fascinating experiment takes things to the next level. The researchers investigated the functional brain characteristics of participants while they engaged in a working memory task. Importantly, none of their subjects had a history of neurological or psychiatric illness, and all had intact working memory abilities. They administered two different versions of the same working memory task during the fMRI scanning session, one version requiring much more concentration than the other. Their more difficult working memory task required constant updating of information in memory while having to resist distraction.

Participants were asked to display their creativity in a number of ways: generating unique ways of using typical objects, imagining desirable functions in ordinary objects and imagining the consequences of “unimaginable things” happening. The creativity test they used has been linked in prior studies to Openness to Experience and frequency of visual hypnagogic experiences (e.g. lucid dreaming, hallucinations), which in turn have been associated with vividness of mental imagery.

The researchers found that the more creative the participant, the more activity in their default-mode network was altered. Particularly, creative individuals had difficulty suppressing the precuneus area of their default network while engaging in the more effortful working memory task. The precuneus is the area of the default network that typically displays the highest levels of activation during rest (when a person is not focusing on an external task). The precuneus has been linked to self-related mental representations and episodic memory retrieval.

How is this conducive to creativity? According to the researchers, “Such an inability to suppress seemingly unnecessary cognitive activity may actually help creative subjects in associating two ideas represented in different networks.”