Using Neuroscience to Image the Creative Brain

2019 ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Nancy C. Andreasen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
High Intelligence ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Early Phases ◽  
Iq Tests

The nature and sources of creativity have intrigued people for many years. During the early phases of this effort, people relied on anecdotal or historical accounts, but in the twentieth century the emphasis shifted to empirical studies. Assuming that high intelligence (“genius”) was associated with creativity, investigators relied on IQ tests to select subjects for study. In the mid-twentieth century the emphasis shifted to custom-designed tests that assessed more specific components of creative thinking. With the development of neuroscientific methods and neuroimaging, the emphasis has shifted to include methods that directly measure brain activity, based on the assumption that creative ideas are the product of brain activity.

scholarly journals Confusions about ‘Inner’ and ‘Outer’ Voices: Conceptual Problems in the Study of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Knappik ◽  
Josef J. Bless ◽  
Frank Larøi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Clinical Assessment ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Diagnostic Value ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Auditory Verbal Hallucinations ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
The Mind

AbstractBoth in research on Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVHs) and in their clinical assessment, it is common to distinguish between voices that are experienced as ‘inner’ (or ‘internal’, ‘inside the head’, ‘inside the mind’, ...) and voices that are experienced as ‘outer’ (‘external’, ‘outside the head’, ‘outside the mind’, ...). This inner/outer-contrast is treated not only as an important phenomenological variable of AVHs, it is also often seen as having diagnostic value. In this article, we argue that the distinction between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ voices is ambiguous between different readings, and that lack of disambiguation in this regard has led to flaws in assessment tools, diagnostic debates and empirical studies. Such flaws, we argue furthermore, are often linked to misreadings of inner/outer-terminology in relevant 19th and early twentieth century work on AVHs, in particular, in connection with Kandinsky’s and Jaspers’s distinction between hallucinations and pseudo-hallucinations.

Studying the effect of Heartfulness Meditation on Brain Activity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pallavi Gupta ◽  
Jahnavi Mundluru ◽  
Arth Patel ◽  
Shankar Pathmakanthan
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Logical Thinking ◽  
Meditation Practice ◽  
Guided Relaxation

Long-term meditation practice is increasingly recognized for its health benefits. Heartfulness meditation represents a quickly growing set of practices that is largely unstudied. Heartfulness is unique in that it is a meditation practice that focuses on the Heart. It helps individuals to connect to themselves and find inner peace. In order to deepen ones’ meditation, the element of Yogic Energy (‘pranahuti’) is used as an aid during meditation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether consistent EEG effects of Heartfulness meditation be observed in sixty experienced Heartfulness meditators, each of whom attended 6 testing sessions. In each session, participants performed three conditions: a set of cognitive tasks, Heartfulness guided relaxation, and Heartfulness Meditation. Participants during the cognitive portion were required to answer questions that tested their logical thinking (Cognitive Reflective Test) and creative thinking skills. (Random Associative Test) The order of condition was randomly counter balanced across six sessions. It was hypothesized that Heartfulness meditation would bring increased alpha (8-12Hz) brain activity during meditation and better cognitive task scores in sessions where the tasks followed meditation. Heartfulness meditation produces a significant decrease in brain activity (as indexed by higher levels of alpha during the early stages of meditation. As the meditation progressed deep meditative state (as indexed by higher levels of delta) were observed until the end of the condition.  This lead to the conclusion that Heartfulness Meditation produces a state that is clearly distinguishable from effortful problem solving. 

scholarly journals EFFECT OF 10 HZ BINAURAL BEAT BRAIN ACTIVITY AND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A SIMPLE SENSORIMOTOR REACTION AND THE REACTION OF CHOICE FOR MEN AND WOMEN

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-80
Author(s):  
A. Shestak ◽  
N. Filimonova
Keyword(s):  
Creative Thinking ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Performance Tasks ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Binaural Beats ◽  
Activation System ◽  
Sensorimotor Reaction ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Binaural Sound

As a result of researches of 20 persons, aged 18-23 years, it was found that men under the influence of binaural beats 10 Hz, compared with binaural sound when testing a simple sensorimotor reaction was found greater activity in the frontal, central and occipital areas of both hemispheres and right temporal and parietal areas, which may be indicative about activation system imaginative and creative thinking, the need for which was absent for the implementation of a simple sensorimotor reaction. Differences in time as a simple sensorimotor reaction and choice reaction was observed. When testing, choice reaction was detected influence of binaural beats 10 Hz on the brain activity of men. In women under the influence of binaural beats 10 Hz were significantly higher speeds as a simple sensorimotor reaction and choice reaction and significantly smaller spread of latent periods of simple sensorimotor reaction. This was above the hemispheric interaction suppressed irrelevant zone and the high activity of the ascending process of attention that has provided highly specific data processing and high performance tasks compared with binaural sound.

scholarly journals BUDDHIST LAW IN EARLY TIBET: THE EMERGENCE OF AN IDEOLOGY

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernanda Pirie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Accounts

AbstractTibet is distinct within the Buddhist regions of Asia for its claims to have developed religious laws. The rulers of its early empire civilized their people by creating laws on the basis of Buddhist principles—or so it is claimed by the writers of Tibetan historical narratives. In fact, the earliest Tibetan laws were not linked in any significant way with Buddhist principles, even after the religion had been firmly established in the region. In this article I explore why and how the idea of Buddhist law first emerged, examining its development through a number of texts from the empire (sixth to ninth centuries) and the immediate postimperial period (tenth to twelfth centuries). It turns out that more ideological accounts of Buddhist law were developed only as the structures of the empire were collapsing. Nevertheless, they do seem to have resonated with at least one, tenth-century ruler. These narratives set the scene for a long series of historical accounts in which the idea that Tibetan law was based on Buddhist principles took hold—an idea that was maintained well into the twentieth century.

Racial Worldmaking

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Mark C. Jerng
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Formation Theory ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Historical Accounts

This introduction describes the theory and method of racial worldmaking. Critiquing the dominant approach of racial formation theory for analyzing race in the humanities and social sciences, it distinguishes an approach based on racial salience - how, when, and where we notice race. It describes the interrelations among genre and race in terms of larger theories of worldbuilding. The archive of popular fiction from 1893 to the present is established and linked to major, overlooked modes of black and Asiatic racialization. This archive challenges prominent historical accounts of race and racism in the twentieth century.

Neumann, John von (1903–57)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Rosmaita
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Computer Architecture ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Computer Architectures ◽  
Von Neumann ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Von Neumann was one of the great mathematical minds of the twentieth century. His work has affected philosophy on several fronts, including logic and the philosophy of science. He also had great influence upon developments in the philosophy of mind: the computer model of mind employed during the middle-to-late twentieth century was explicitly based upon the von Neumann computer architecture. Although late twentieth-century philosophy of mind has largely rejected the von Neumann machine as a model of brain activity, his pioneering work in cellular automata has provided a basis for subsequent development in ‘distributed’ or ‘connectionist’ computer architectures.

scholarly journals French subject island? Empirical studies of dont and de qui

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Abeillé ◽  
Elodie Winckel
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Recent Innovation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Relative Pronouns

AbstractDont has been claimed to be an exception to the ‘subject island’ constraint (Tellier, 1991; Sportiche and Bellier, 1989; Heck, 2009) and to contrast with true relative pronouns such as de qui. We provide corpus data from a literary corpus (Frantext), which show that relativizing out of the subject is possible with dont and de qui in French relative clauses, and is even the most frequent use of both relative clauses. We show that it is not a recent innovation by comparing subcorpora from the beginning of the twentieth century and from the beginning of the twenty-first century. We also show, with an acceptability judgement task, that extraction out of the subject with de qui is well accepted. Why has this possibility been overlooked? We suggest that it may be because de qui relatives in general are less frequent than dont relatives (about 60 times less in our corpus). Turning to de qui interrogatives, we show that extraction out of the subject is not attested, and propose an explanation of the contrast with relative clauses. We conclude that in this respect, French does not seem to differ from other Romance languages.

Using fMRI to Study the Neural Correlates of Virtual Reality Analgesia

CNS Spectrums ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hunter G. Hoffman ◽  
Todd L. Richards ◽  
Aric R. Bills ◽  
Trevor Van Oostrom ◽  
Jeff Magula ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Medical Problem ◽  
Control Technique ◽  
Medical Procedures ◽  
Burn Wound ◽  
Pain Ratings ◽  
Subjective Pain

ABSTRACTExcessive pain during medical procedures, such as burn wound dressing changes, is a widespread medical problem and is especially challenging for children. This article describes the rationale behind virtual reality (VR) pain distraction, a new non-pharmacologic adjunctive analgesia, and gives a brief summary of empirical studies exploring whether VR reduces clinical procedural pain. Results indicate that patients using VR during painful medical procedures report large reductions in subjective pain. A neuroimaging study measuring the neural correlates of VR analgesia is described in detail. This functional magnetic resonance imaging pain study in healthy volunteers shows that the large drops in subjective pain ratings during VR are accompanied by large drops in pain-related brain activity. Together the clinical and laboratory studies provide converging evidence that VR distraction is a promising new non-pharmacologic pain control technique.

Parliamentary Reform

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Pentland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Volume ◽  
Political History ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Parliamentary Reform ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Term Analysis

This chapter evaluates the large volume of creative scholarship that has reinterpreted and recast our understanding of the ‘heroic age’ of parliamentary reform before the early twentieth century. In doing so, it argues that this varied body of work in itself highlights the value of parliamentary reform as an area for historical research, not least because it has acted as a fertile source of new questions and approaches for political history more generally. Its centrality to accounts of Britain’s political past makes the conspicuous absence of historical accounts of parliamentary reform over the longue durée puzzling. The chapter ends by discussing whether a long-term analysis of parliamentary reform is desirable or possible and examining the potential for historical research into parliamentary reform after 1945.

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