PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Alpha oscillations are known to play a central role in several higher-order cognitive functions, especially selective attention, working memory, semantic memory, and creative thinking. Nonetheless, we still know very little about the role of alpha in the generation of more remote semantic associations, which is key to creative and semantic cognition. Furthermore, it remains unclear how these oscillations are shaped by the intention to \"be creative,\" which is the case in most creativity tasks. We aimed to address these gaps in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we compared alpha oscillatory activity (using a method which distinguishes genuine oscillatory activity from transient events) during the generation of free associations which were more vs. less distant from a given concept. In Experiment 2, we replicated these findings and also compared alpha oscillatory activity when people were generating free associations versus associations with the instruction to be creative (i.e. goal-directed). We found that alpha was consistently higher during the generation of more distant semantic associations, in both experiments. This effect was widespread, involving areas in both left and right hemispheres. Importantly, the instruction to be creative seems to increase alpha phase synchronisation from left to right temporal brain areas, suggesting that intention to be creative changed the flux of information in the brain, likely reflecting an increase in top-down control of semantic search processes. We conclude that goal-directed generation of remote associations relies on top-down mechanisms compared to when associations are freely generated.
摘要：
已知Alpha振荡在几种高阶认知功能中起着核心作用，特别是选择性的注意，工作记忆,语义记忆，和创造性思维。尽管如此，我们仍然对alpha在更远程语义关联生成中的作用知之甚少，这是创造性和语义认知的关键。此外，目前还不清楚这些振荡是如何通过“创造性”的意图来塑造的，“在大多数创造性任务中都是如此。我们旨在在两个实验中解决这些差距。在实验1中，我们比较了阿尔法振荡活动（使用一种将真正的振荡活动与瞬态事件区分开的方法）离一个给定的概念不那么遥远。在实验2中，我们复制了这些发现，并比较了人们产生自由关联时的alpha振荡活动与具有创造性（即目标导向）的指令的关联。我们发现，在更远的语义关联的产生过程中，alpha始终更高，在两个实验中。这种影响很普遍，涉及左右半球的区域。重要的是,创造性的指令似乎增加了从左到右颞脑区域的α相位同步，这表明创造性的意图改变了大脑中信息的流动，可能反映了对语义搜索过程的自上而下控制的增加。我们得出的结论是，与自由生成关联时相比，以目标为导向的远程关联生成依赖于自上而下的机制。
