Chase, Chance, and Creativity

by James H Austin

  There is another role for stimuli, depending on what part of the brain is stimulated. Nerve cells in the brain differ in their functional impact. Some are extraordinarily influential, and when such key nerve cells are stimulated, they exert powerful effects on behavior. This can be seen in the laboratory if one implants a fine wire down in these influential nerve fibers in the brain and then stimulates them with a discrete electrical current. The external stimulus soon becomes an extraordinarily effective "reward" in itself. It is important to appreciate that the experimental animal can then be conditioned to press a lever to "turn on" the stimuli to his own physiologically satisfying nerve pathways. Thus, he will go on trying to continue the stimulus, repeatedly pressing-for many hours or days-the lever that keeps delivering the current, preferring this stimulus to food, water, and sex. The experiments show how readily the nervous system can get "hooked" when it receives certain stimuli from the outside that can energize sensory-motor systems.

  The especially rewarding neuronal systems that mediate this phenomenon are located near the base of the brain. At first, they came to be loosely known as "the pleasure center," but they are too diffusely represented for the word "center" to be accurate. For example, the reward systems include the ascending network of cells in the brain stem called the reticular formation; its extensions into the hypothalamus, subthalamus, and certain thalamic nuclei; and the more primitive cerebral structures collectively known as the limbic lobe." Some special nerve pathways are also distinctive biochemically. For example, the possibility has recently been raised that some discharge specific neurotransmitter substances, dopamine and noradrenalin, at their nerve endings.` These two biogenic amines are closely related to their counterpart, adrenalin, more familiar to us as the substance that, released into the blood stream from our adrenal glands, makes our pulse race and bound when we are excited.

  Nowadays, we talk about being "turned on" by an idea. We may well he describing quite literally the satisfying state of alertness and pleasurable excitement triggered directly or indirectly by stimuli that fire some of the special neuronal systems deep within our brain. For it is important to note that we humans, too, have reward systems in our brains, waiting for us to find normal memorable stimuli adequate to turn them on. Stimulation experiments were done years ago in humans by means of fine wires implanted deep in the brain., and these have borne out the findings in animals. The human patients, who also developed self-stimulation behavior when given a lever to press,"' reported that the stimuli caused them to experience a feeling of ease and relaxation, a sense of joy with smiling, and a feeling of great satisfaction. Experimenters studying both humans and animals appear to have their wires tapped into some neuronal systems that normally operate in the brain to mimic natural stimuli.

  You don't need wires inside your brain to feel this way. For example, I've been aware for years that my temporal lobes are connected with my hypothalamus. Whenever I hear (with my temporal lobes) some musical sequences that affect me profoundly, I get not only an emotional feeling of deep pleasure, but the overflow through my hypothalamus triggers off gooseflesh extending from the back of my head all the way down to the calves of my legs.

  We can only assume that persuasive reward systems exist, giving less tangible external evidence than gooseflesh, but still imprinting us subtly from infancy on with "good" internal feelings in certain environmental settings.' We may not be consciously aware every time these internal systems are engaged, but they still provide the physiological basis for motivating our behavior toward certain kinds of external stimuli. Moreover, once programmed, our brain would seem to acquire the capacity to seek out those new circumstances, those new levers, that reinforce its own "good" behavior. This would occur even though it might be impossible fully to express in words the precise reason for our pressing the "levers" in our environment or to sense the reason for our "good feeling" when some new action is successful.

  There are not only "positive, rewarding" sites that reinforce a subject's pressing a lever, but also "negative" sites that cause him to try to avoid the stimulus. Some fibers in the latter system are located more externally in the brain stem and may liberate a different neurotransmitter substance, acetylcholine, at their nerve terminals.'' The profound implications to man, the social animal, of having both positive and negative ways to "civilize" his behavior are surely of immense practical significance in directing our creative efforts and enabling us to survive as a species.

  The transcendent "high" that comes when a brand new idea hits might seem to be a stimulating state of mind so pleasurable, so memorable, that it would itself serve as an internal reward, helping to condition the exploratory drive. Yet, as a matter of personal observation, I have never been remotely conscious of seeking out anything for this "big" reason. Rather, when such a feeling arises, it seems to occur more as a by-product and not as a primary reason for a search. On the other hand, I can more readily define as a motivating influence the sustained excitement, the sense of being totally absorbed if not possessed, that comes with following up a hot lead. Being has its limitations; becoming carries an aura of excitement. Eiduson summarizes this nicely by noting that the research scientist is not swept up in the pursuit of happiness, but finds rather his "happiness in pursuit."" The chase itself is more rewarding than the rabbit. Perhaps that is why one lets the rabbit go, to chase again some other day.

  Everyone knows that it is easier to learn and recall "cold" facts when they are "warmed up" with meaning by a good teacher and given impact by piquant metaphor or simile. Unless we do develop some ex- trameaningful neuronal associations in this manner, how else could one remember, for example, to palpate months after the event for enlarged nerves in the rare patient who might have hypertrophic neuritis?

  How do the foregoing points relate to creativity? The neuronal set when memory traces are originally laid down has a great deal to do with how easily we later scan enormous quantities of data, then link together and retrieve only the pertinent information. For instance, we can envision the complex neuronal network that constitutes one memorable thought as something like a telephone switchboard whose connections extend all over the globe. In every country there are millions of black telephones and many white ones which carry the routine conversations, the sometimes significant but largely forgettable day-today chatter. Nowadays, there are also a few circuits linked by phones of another color. RED telephones. When your "hot line" rings, you're not only placed instantly on the alert, but you'll remember the conversation. (If you don't remember it, it may still be there, but repressed.) In a sense, these "red" circuits correspond to the several facilitatory systems at the base of our brain. True, memories do drift back when one achieves a certain critical mass of connections, but some surge back quickly, powered by an extra dose of psychic energy. When such memorable circuits are hooked in among the more routine ones in a complex memory loop, they capture our attention, enhance our perception, help us retain the information, and permit us to retrieve it in a flash months or even years later. One striking example serves to illustrate the phenomenon-reflect on how accurately your mind retrieves precise details of the moment when you first heard the news about President Kennedy's assassination or the events of September 11, 2001.

  Stimuli need to vary-or your brain itself needs to change-if you are going continually to pay attention to items of information from your environment. For example, if you are constantly exposed to a ripe onion odor, you become insensitive to it. Physiological psychologists call this phenomenon "olfactory fatigue." The disposition toward novelty also has its own physiological needs-it cannot long tolerate "sameness" in its surroundings. To dispense originality, it must feed on change.

  The optimal amount and kind of change you need depends on what state you are in at the time you begin. If you start in a "low" phase, you will seek out zest and vitality, for life without them is intolerably drab and unproductive. But, if you are already in an ebullient "high" phase, it is easy to become overstimulate
d to the point of hypersensitivity and hyperactivity. Because these, too, become both uncomfortable and counterproductive, a cycle of behavior can then occur: induced hypersensitivity first leads both to withdrawal from stimuli and to habituation to stimuli. When each of these in turn becomes associated with a sense of boredom, you finally move back out again to search for the variety in novel stimuli:

  Are the creative really any more sensitive to external stimuli? In humans, inborn abilities are difficult to disentangle from those that we have learned. So, too, is it difficult to separate the primary sensitivities of our eyes and ears from the subsequent mental elaborations that take place in our brains. In many instances, creative individuals appear to excel] not so much in their primary, threshold, ability to perceive a simple auditory or visual stimulus, but in their subsequent ability to process stimuli, retain them, retrieve them in new combinations, and subsequently put them to good use. Some evidence does suggest that the most creative, when defined by their fluency on visually oriented, nonverbal tests, do pick up prior cues and then use them more readily when they subsequently solve problems."

  Intelligent creative persons, as inferred from word association tests, also seek out word stimuli that are followed by the delivery of novel, improbable associations.`" Indeed, the subjects appeared not only to prefer novelty, but to have a distinct need for it that could actually be reinforced. Perhaps some creative individuals like the feeling of novelty, the quality of freshness of experience, so much that they seek to perpetuate it. The tale of the three princes of Serendip (Appendix A) really takes off at the pivotal moment when their father, in his kingly wisdom, finally realizes that only when his sons now get away from home, travel, and experience other cultures will they finally become fully educated. While we tend to identify the Wainderjnlir as more of a Western construct, the many virtues of travel had been appreciated millennia before in other Eastern cultures.

  Your search for novelty shuts off if you are aroused to the point of anxiety. Experimentally, a sense of anxiety was caused by first exposing subjects to a message so confusing that it produced a threat to their selfesteem. Thereafter, the experimental subjects chose fewer novel stimulus cards than they did before .2' Experiments in animals also suggest that stimuli are more rewarding only at moderate levels of arousal and that the reward value falls off at high levels." Any administrator genuinely concerned about creative output should clearly keep the anxiety level of his team below the point of diminishing returns.

  Thus far, we have considered how stimuli come in to activate the brain in general. Then we observed how certain stimulated nerve cells go on in a more specific way to motivate behavior, to enhance the way the whole brain learns and recalls. It is now time to consider the ways the two halves of the brain differ from each other. For it turns out that the right and left sides of our brain complement each other, and we are now beginning to perceive many fascinating and subtle creative implications of their partnership.

  27

  Right Brain/Left Brain; One Brain

  The mind in creation is as a fading coal which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within ... and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or of its departure.

  Percy Shelley

  The "mind in creation" is really the brain in creation. My purpose in this chapter is to continue to suggest some ways that the brain is involved in creativity. I am speculating here, and the reader is forewarned that when anyone speculates about the human nervous system, plausibility is far removed from certainty. Let us begin with an example of a relatively simple sensory-motor task.

  You are hungry. Suppose you glimpse, out of the left corner of your eye, a luscious red apple lying on a nearby table. Visual information about the apple and where it lies in the space off to your left has come in, then crossed over, and been perceived by your right visual cortex. But to see the apple clearly, you must turn your eyes to the left. At this point, aware that information is required by the right visual cortex, the eye movement center in your right frontal lobe directs your eyes to the left.* You now see, at a glance, that the apple lies within reach.

  Your left arm, governed by the activity of the opposite right motor cortex, stretches out toward the apple. As your fingers touch the apple, sensory information from your skin and finger joints goes up, crosses over, and apprises the right sensory cortex that you are indeed on target. After a beautifully integrated series of crossed sensory-motor interactions, the apple comes up to your mouth, courtesy of your right cerebral hemisphere.

  Your left hemisphere could do the same, vice versa, if the apple had been off to the right, for in these routine sensory and motor functions like reaching or walking, one side of the brain conducts the affairs of the opposite side of the body very much the same way as does its partner.

  Not so when the two halves of the mind are involved in creative activity. They do not behave as identical twins, nor is one the mirror image of the other. The inconstant wind of creativity fans different coals on the two sides of the brain. Though our conscious mind can predict the timing of the creative impulse no more readily now than it could in Shelley's day, we do know a little more now about how the coals glow differently on the two sides. Our left cerebral hemisphere "thinks" in verbal, auditory terms, is good at translating symbols, including those of mathematics as well as language, and works best when analyzing a sequence of details.' For these reasons our left hemisphere plays the dominant role when we talk and listen, when we actively memorize, when we recognize the conceptual similarities between a newspaper press and a radio station, or when we count each of forty-eight stars on a flag, then go on to conclude, logically, that the flag must antedate the entry of Alaska and Hawaii into the Union.

  In contrast, our right hemisphere "thinks" in visual, nonverbal terms, particularly in terms involving complex spatial relationships, and specializes in three dimensional depth perception.' It also recognizes structural similarities, and works best in Gestalt: that is, drawing conclusions based on a grasp of the total (visual) picture. It will instantly recognize a friend's face in a crowd, or perceive that a large skeleton key will fit a keyhole that has only a certain size and shape. Being adept at incidental memorization and the more musically gifted of the two, it may also prompt us to hum a long forgotten tune in an evocative surrounding.

  Freud, delving deeply into his own associations, helped us figure out some reasons why such a tune might be prompted to leap out of the depths of the brain given its special environmental cue. But this is very difficult detective work, because the right hemisphere, however interrogated verbally, "isn't talking." It basically is nonverbal. Here is a most tantalizing paradox for those who would wish to understand creative mechanisms and express what they know in language. Hidden away, almost out of reach of language, can be the source of intuitive insights that are of fundamental importance in solving a problem. And this hemisphere can't tell us, in so many words, what sequences it has been experiencing. It is mute.

  Did Tchaikovsky anticipate that the musical hemisphere might not only function separately, but also at the same time as the speaking hemisphere? Could the right side compose music even while the left side is talking? This is what he said:

  Sometimes I observe with curiosity that uninterrupted activity, whichindependent of the subject of any conversation I may be carrying oncontinues its course in that department of my brain which is devoted to music. Sometimes it takes a preparatory form-that is, the consideration of all details that concern the elaboration of some projected work; another time it may be an entirely new and independent musical idea....'

  Because the left hemisphere is the more vocal of the two, - its preeminent role in language has long been evident in patients who lost their speech when the left hemisphere was damaged by strokes or tumors. Only recently have the more subtle contributions of the right side of the brain caught the attention of many students of the hum
an nervous system.' We now know that much of the nonverbal thinking we do depends on the way the right side perceives and analyzes the world around us. While its left partner proceeds, piecemeal, to examine the irregular bark on each tree, our right hemisphere grasps in one sweep the shape of the whole forest, relates it adroitly to the contours of the near landscape, then to the line of the horizon.

  The brain waves of normal persons performing normal activities clearly reveal these functional differences between the two sides of the brain. To appreciate the differences, one must compare the amplitude and frequency of electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings from the right side with those from the left using fairly sophisticated mathematical formulae and interpretations. Suppose then, with the wires on your scalp, you attempt to solve a musical task such as listening to detect the recurrences of one rare phrase in a whole Bach concerto. Or, try to solve a spatial task such as building in your mind's eye a complex figure out of a given number of disassembled blocks. Your EEG will indicate that you have engaged chiefly the attention of the regions in the back of your right hemisphere." In contrast, if you are given a verbal task, such as mentally composing a letter, your EEG indicates that the major activity is in the corresponding regions of your left hemisphere.