Don’t let my friend’s smile fool you. Dasha would like nothing more than to take a slice out of your brain.
Meet Dr. Darya Zabelina, PhD. She’s conducting clinical research to unlock the mysteries of creativity. She was kind enough to explain (slowly) the critical role of the anterior cingulate cortex in creative thinking. Who knew?
Dasha is headed for England flush with a $200,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Hers is one of the winners out of 350 submissions.
Here’s what she knows:
“A-ha moments” can happen anywhere. The manager of a short-order kitchen may be as brilliant as a pioneer heart surgeon. Preparing an omelet can be a benchmark of genius.
To earn the 5 light-bulb award an idea has to be useful — finger paintings by kids might be inventive but so what? Passion and patience are important. People sometimes play with variables for years before they have an “instant” epiphany.
Dasha’s team uses EEGs and FMRIs to grab digital images (slices) as the brain lights up during creative challenges, all the while she is capturing quantitative data.
Is smarter better? Yes and no. Increases in creativity flatten out with above-average IQs. And while you do need knowledge and experience —you want to be careful, over-learning can actually dull the imagination.
Are mad scientists and tortured playwrights more creative than you and me? Emotional problems make it harder to be productive. Alcohol can give a sense of creative euphoria that disappears the next morning. (I’ve done research on that myself.)
Dasha immigrated from Bishkek in north-central Kyrgystan when she was 16 and later earned her doctorate at Northwestern University. Her recent paper to the American Psychological Association was extremely well received.
I asked Dasha if creativity rubs off. Does she have to brush ingenuity off of her clothes before she leaves work? Has exploring imagination made her more imaginative? She couldn’t say, but the Templeton crew obviously thinks so.
