There are 80 66 cortical and 14 subcortical volumes obtained across the brain for each participant. Given that five in Type I errors are considered to be generally acceptable in research designs, we would expect roughly four regions of 80 to be related to our measures by chance. While this does not fully account for Type I error, we believe that it reasonably balances the risk of both Type I and Type II error in this exploratory experiment. Means and standard deviations for all behavioral measures are presented in Table 1.
We next sought to determine the underlying structure of the HIQ by conducting an exploratory factor analysis of the 10 questions answered at the end of the survey. The rotated factor matrix is presented in Table 2. We next sought to determine the reliability of the HIQ by means of internal consistency of questions across factors consisting of multiple, positively related, measures. Cronbach's alpha for Satisfaction was 0. Seventy-one of the original 80 participants were administered the HIQ on a second occasion, with at least 1 month of time between administrations range 4—8 weeks.
Cronbach's Alpha was 0. Finally, we sought to determine the correlation between the HIQ and established measures of creative achievement via the CAQ across all participants.
It should be noted that these participants were over-selected for representation within the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math disciplines; therefore, correlates between their imagination ability and Scientific Achievements might be expected to be higher than for normally selected samples. We regressed all volume measures, as well as subcortical volumes, against each factor controlling for Total Supratentorial volume, sex, and Full Scale Intelligence Score.
Figure 2. Left medial view of average brain surface volumes gray , and subcortical structures including the Nucleus Accumbens light brown. Figure 3. Right medial view of average brain surface volumes gray , showing lingual gyrus region red. We found that this complex, naturalistic, measure of imagination was related to a network of brain regions previously identified to be associated with various components of this complex cognitive capacity, including the bilateral hippocampi, posterior regions of the cingulate gyrus, both medial and lateral prefrontal cortical regions, and the lingual gyrus.
It is both compelling and gratifying that participants could be asked to engage in a complex task of imagination, over a period of weeks, and that their self-reported measures of satisfaction, implementation, learning, and overall experience in performing the task would be correlated with key brain regions identified as being critical to key aspects of imagination ability.
The HIQ was found to be a psychometrically sound instrument, with a normal distribution of scores, good internal reliability, good test-retest reliability, and good concurrent validity with measures of creative achievement particularly Scientific Creativity and Writing from the CAQ.
As would be expected given such a complex behavioral task, the relationship between imagination and brain regions was also complex, although increased left hippocampal volume was associated with higher likelihood of implementing the imagined ideas, and increased right hippocampal volume was associated with participants' perception of increased learning about their own imagination process. This is the first study to demonstrate such brain-behavior relationships in a naturalistic setting i.
Some of the complexity of the brain-behavior relationships might be explained by our previous work in creative cognition research. In our recent overview of the anatomical neuroimaging studies of creativity Jung et al. Our results also conform to this general pattern; indeed, we found that nearly all decreased volumes that related to HIQ rankings were within DMN regions, including the posterior cingulate, precuneus, medial-orbital frontal gyrus, transverse temporal gyrus, and isthmus of the cingulate gyrus.
This correspondence between decreased volumes and HIQ performance within DMN regions further supports this instrument as a measure of key aspects of imagination, including 1 remembering the past, 2 envisioning the future, and 3 considering the thoughts and perspectives of other people Crespi et al. We also found rather consistent associations between decreased nucleus accumbens volume and higher scores across the HIQ i. The nucleus accumbens is a structure linked to anticipation of incentives i.
In humans, functioning of the nucleus accumbens has been critically linked to sensation seeking and novelty seeking behaviors in non-clinical populations Abler et al. While these results are intriguing, we anticipate that future research will help to identify the specific relationship between nucleus accumbens structure and function and imagination activity and ability.
Brief mention should be made of associations between the HIQ Total score, Implementation, and Learning factors and increased volume of the lingual gyrus. These relationships likely reflect this structures importance to encoding and recalling complex visual material Machielsen et al.
There are several limitations to the current research. The main limitation for neuroimaging studies almost always includes a note of caution given the relatively small sample, and given the complexity of brain-behavioral research questions entertained. This limitation is further highlighted by the fact that our sample included roughly twice the number of females as compared to males.
We do not know why females were more likely to respond to the invitation to participate in the HIQ; however, this could have created biases in our sampling that could have affected our results. We controlled for sex throughout the analyses and there was no indication that the results did not reflect relationships across both sexes.
However, future studies, with larger samples comprised of equal numbers of males and females would tend to increase the inferences that could be made. Relatedly, our sample was comprised of a young, healthy, cohort and we do not know whether our results would apply to individuals older than 35 years of age. We chose a young sample to ensure that volumetric brain changes associated with normal aging, which tend to stabilize in early adulthood Tamnes et al. With regard to HIQ administration, we asked participants to limit their idea generation time to 8 min, but did not create a mechanism to check whether they took longer or significantly shorter to complete each session.
Finally, because the participants acted as their own raters, it is possible that other factors e. Future studies should attempt to measure and control for such factors to determine their potential influence upon HIQ ratings. We believe this to be the first study to relate a complex, naturalistic, measure of imagination to a network of brain regions previously associated with various facets of imagination ability.
The participants' responses to the HIQ were associated with volumes across a broad network of brain regions previously associated with imagination including:. In conclusion, the HIQ showed good psychometric qualities, and was well tolerated by all participants. It provides a reliable, valid, method by which to assess brain-behavior relationships related to this complex cognitive construct.
RJ, RF each contributed to the analysis of the data. RJ and DH wrote the manuscript. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Abler, B. Prediction error as a linear function of reward probability is coded in human nucleus accumbens. Neuroimage 31 , — Abraham, A. Creative cognition and the brain: dissociations between frontal, parietal-temporal and basal ganglia groups.
Brain Res. Ardekani, S. Exploratory voxel-based analysis of diffusion indices and hemispheric asymmetry in normal aging. Imaging 25 , — Beaty, R. Creative cognition and brain network dynamics. Trends Cogn. When executive functioning is required, the imagination network is largely quiet.
But this network is extremely important for internal reflection and the process of meaning-making. It is associated with daydreaming, retrieving deeply personal memories and moderating emotional space. Most of the time the brain toggles between the default mode network and the more outward-focused attention network.
But neuroscientists like Rex Jung and colleagues are beginning to map out an understanding of creative cognition. They're finding that very creative people actually have stronger connections between the networks.
He believes this is because imaginative, creative people are good at disconnecting the attention network in order to enter a flow state when they generate ideas, but can then key back into executive functioning in order to focus, sort and make sense of that generative time.
They also tend to be open to experiences and score highly on divergent thinking tests. Since both attention and imagination networks are located in the brain, Kaufman believes it is a misnomer to call the qualities arising from the default mode network "non-cognitive. Despite the primacy of the attention network and executive functioning in education , Kaufman says there are several ways parents and educators can nurture creativity in young people and in adults. Executive function for what?
Then when the teacher demands attention, it is worthwhile to the learner. By Alex Fradera The human mind has been so successful in transforming the material world that it is easy to forget that it too is subject to its own constraints.
Like this: Like Loading By Christian Jarrett. Pingback: Signal Conduction — 7 April Cognitales. Pingback: Visual imagination — morning glory. Loading Comments Measuring imagination has implications not only for individuals but for entire schools. To that end, they organized a series of retreats that brought together accomplished people from within a particular field to talk about how imagination works for them.
Most of the gatherings were held in Philadelphia, although retreats were held as far away as Palo Alto, Calif. Each of the retreats had a distinct flavor springing from its topic. The Psychology Imagination Retreat, held in late , featured a discussion about what fosters imagination and what can hinder it — participants examined, for instance, whether the demands of scientific rigor might hinder the imaginative leaps that have been hallmarks of many psychological advances.
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