No abstract

The aims of this fMRI study were two-fold. The first objective of the study was to verify whether the findings associated with a previous fMRI study could be replicated in which a novel event-related experimental design was developed which rendered it possible to investigate the brain basis of creative conceptual expansion. The ability to widen the boundaries of conceptual structures is integral to creative idea generation, which makes conceptual expansion a core component of creative cognition. Creative conceptual expansion led to the engagement of brain regions that are known to be involved in the access, storage and relational integration of conceptual knowledge in the original study. These included the anterior inferior frontal gyrus, the temporal poles and the lateral frontal pole. These findings in relation to the brain basis of creative conceptual expansion were replicated in the current study. The second objective of this study was to evaluate the brain basis of individual differences in creative conceptual expansion. The high creative group relative to the low creative group was shown to exhibit greater activity in regions of the semantic cognition network as well as the salience network during creative conceptual expansion. The findings are discussed from the point of view of classical hypotheses about information processing biases that explain individual differences in creativity including flat associative hierarchies, defocused attention and cognitive disinhibition.

Although studies on social anxiety and alcohol-related problems are numerous, the exact nature of the relationship remains unclear. In the present study, we investigate how the motive to drink due to social anxiety is associated with hazardous alcohol use over and above habitual alcohol use, social anxiety, and alcohol outcome expectancies. We also examine which factors define the motive to drink due to social anxiety and clarify the impact of the type of social situation. Drinking due to social anxiety, habitual alcohol use, and gender, but not social anxiety, were associated with hazardous alcohol use. Social anxiety increased the motive to drink due to social anxiety, but fear of cognitive performance deficits after drinking reduced it. Alcohol was used to reduce anxiety more frequently in situations where intake of alcohol is deemed socially acceptable. These findings suggest that the motive drinking due to social anxiety, not social anxiety per se, is related to hazardous alcohol use. The motive is weakened by the expectation of alcohol-induced cognitive deficits, as well as by the type of social situation in which alcohol is to be used.

No abstract

No abstract