创新思维中原型激活促发顿悟的认知神经机制

Neural Correlates of Prototype Activation in Insight During Creative Thinking

创造性是人类智能的高级表现,创新思维则是个体创造性的核心过程。我们以创造性问题解决中的顿悟过程为研究对象,提出并验证了创新思维中原型激活促发顿悟的理论构想;综合运用事件相关电位(ERP)和功能性核磁共振(fMRI)的技术优势,初步揭示了原型激活促发顿悟的大脑机制。具体表现为,楔前叶的激活可能与原型激活和关键信息提取有关;左侧额下回/额中回的激活可能与与思维定势打破和新异联结形成有关;同时研究也表明大脑的特定准备状态(额中回/扣带前回的激活)对顿悟的产生有积极的促进作用。

Insight indicates a restructuring of the problem that leads to a sudden gain of solution with an ＂Aha＂ experience. However, the neural correlates of ＂insights＂ remain unknown because insights are sporadic, unpredictable and short-lived. Here, we hypothesized that ＂prototype activation and elicitation＂ might be one of the central ways to attain insight during creative thinking, and used a learning-testing paradigm to examine brain activation of ＂Aha＂ effects with event-related potentials （ERPs） and functional MRI （fMRI） during solving Chinese logogriphs. Results indicated that the precuneus might be involved in successful prototype events retrieval and the left inferior frontal/middle frontal gyrus might be involved in forming novel association and breaking mental sets. In addition, results also indicated that the neural network comprising specific brain areas in the medial frontal, temporal and cerebellum brain regions might be the potential neural basis of ＂successful mental preparation＂ for solving insight problem.