Creative therapy in health and disease: Inner vision

Abstract

Can we better understand the unique mechanisms of de novo abilities in light of our current knowledge of the psychological and neuroscientific literature on creativity? This review outlines the state‐of‐the‐art in the neuroscience of creativity and points out crucial aspects that still demand further exploration, such as brain plasticity. The progressive development of current neuroscience research on creativity presents a multitude of prospects and potentials for furnishing efficacious therapy in the context of health and illness. Therefore, we discuss directions for future studies, identifying a focus on pinpointing the neglected beneficial practices for creative therapy. We emphasize the neglected neuroscience perspective of creativity on health and disease and how creative therapy could offer limitless possibilities to improve our well‐being and give hope to patients with neurodegenerative diseases to compensate for their brain injuries and cognitive impairments by expressing their hidden creativity.

Individual differences and creative ideation: neuromodulatory signatures of mindset and response inhibition

“…To assemble the puzzle regarding understanding neural correlates and cortical activation of creative ideation, neuroscience research agendas must consider the variety of neuroscientific methodologies ( Abraham, 2013 , 2018 ; Khalil et al, 2019 , 2023a ; Khalil and Moustafa, 2022 ; Khalil and Demarin, 2023 ). Some researchers established neuroscientific methods and imaging analysis techniques have yet to find wide use in creativity research, notably combined methods (e.g., simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography; see Ullsperger, 2010 ).…”

The light side of gaming: creativity and brain plasticity

“…According to Polner et al (2015), Guseva (2019), and Khalil and Demarin (2023), the brain's extraordinary ability to adapt and change serves as an example of the promise of creative therapy in the arts. After thoroughly evaluating numerous theories on the conceptualization of creativity, games, and brain plasticity, we briefly present our perspective in this review and highlight how integrating disciplines could benefit effective therapy.…”

“…The multidimensional nature of creativity makes it challenging to define; it encompasses music, literature, art, movement, science, etc., which interact and interdepend, emphasizing the diverse perspectives involved (Abraham, 2013(Abraham, , 2018Khalil et al, 2019;Khalil and Moustafa, 2022;Khalil and Demarin, 2023). In contemporary times, there has been a shift in the physiological approach toward comprehending creativity, with a focus on delineating its mechanisms within the framework of brain networks (Jung et al, 2013;Abraham, 2014Abraham, , 2018Beaty et al, 2015Beaty et al, , 2016aBeaty et al, , 2018Beaty et al, , 2019Beaty and Schacter, 2017;Corazza et al, 2022;Khalil and Demarin, 2023) and learning rules 1 (Khalil and Moustafa, 2022).…”

Do not let the beginning trap you! On inhibition, associative creative chains, and Hopfield neural networks

“…Furthermore, the topology of HNN closely mirrors human memory, which encodes many neurons that fire together in response to “microfeatures” (Gabora, 2010). Creative thinking allows individuals to switch between analytical and associative modes to find solutions (Dietrich, 2004b, 2004a; Finke, 1996; Xie et al, 2021), and thus the act of creativity enables individuals to view the environment in novel ways, identify concealed patterns, and establish associations between seemingly disparate occurrences, resulting in the production of exceptional outcomes (Abraham, 2018; Herrmann, 1981; Khalil & Demarin, 2023; Khalil & Moustafa, 2022). The model proposed by Mendelson in 1974 utilized defocused and focused attention to explicate the semantic hierarchy of creative associations.…”