Improvement in creativity after transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Abstract

Improvement in creativity after transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNs) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortexJavier peña , Agurne sampedro, Naroa Ibarretxe-Bilbao, Leire Zubiaurre-elorza & Natalia ojeda Creativity has previously been shown to improve after the application of direct and alternating current transcranial stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLpFC). However, previous studies have not tested whether transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) was efficient for this purpose. The aim of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was to investigate the effect of tRNs on both verbal convergent and (verbal and visual) divergent thinking during left DLpFC tRNs stimulation. thirty healthy participants were randomly allocated to either a tRNs active group or a sham group. Each session lasted 20 min and the current was set to 1.5 mA (100-500 Hz). Participants' verbal convergent thinking was assessed with the Remote Associates test (RAt). Verbal and visual divergent thinking were respectively measured by using the Unusual Uses and picture Completion subtests from the torrance tests of Creative thinking. Bootstrapped analysis of variance showed significant differences in the mean change scores between the active tRNS group and the sham group in RAt scores (d = 1.68); unusual uses: fluency (d = 2.29) and originality (d = 1.43); and general creativity (d = 1.45). Visual divergent thinking, in contrast, did not show any significant improvement. Our results suggested that tRNS over the left DLPFC is effective for increasing verbal divergent and convergent thinking.Creativity plays a key role in many areas of human life, as has been previously suggested 1 . An increasing number of studies have attempted to investigate the neurological basis for creativity using either MRI 2,3 or EEG techniques 4 . Additional evidence of brain areas and networks related to creativity performance has come from studies that included noninvasive transcranial stimulation A review recently carried out by Weinberger et al. 5 indicated that creative cognition may involve two main processes: idea generation (which depends on the availability of unfiltered information), and idea selection (which includes task-directed thoughts and integration of semantically distant concepts). Each of these processes has been suggested to rely primarily on different neural mechanisms 6 .More specifically, idea generation has been mostly related to cathodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of the left inferior frontotemporal cortex, including the anterior temporal lobe 7,8 , inferior frontal gyrus 9 and prefrontal cortex 10 . This improvement in idea generation generally refers to divergent thinking. Divergent thinking has been defined as the ability to simultaneously establish remote associations between unrelated concepts from distant categories, as well as to generate multiple alternative and novel answers to a single problem 11 . For example, Chrysikou et al. 10 reported a higher number of uncommon use...

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