The Creative Brain and Individuality: A Commentary Exploring Three Surprising Insights from Half a Century of Research

The year 2019 marked the 50^th anniversary of the Society of Neuroscience, which was founded in 1969 by the United States National Academies Committee on Brain Sciences with the stated primary aim to “advance understanding of nervous systems and their role in behavior” (Altimus et al., 2020, p. 101). This newly defined discipline immediately took the world of academic research by storm. The field of creativity was no stranger to the application of this novel empirical approach, and the earliest studies to measure brain activity during creative thinking were published in the 1970s, in which electroencephalography (an electrophysiological method using scalp electrodes to measure electrical activity elicited by the brain) was the first neuroscientific technique to be employed (e.g., Martindale & Armstrong, 1974; Martindale & Hasenfus, 1978; Martindale & Hines, 1975). Modern functional neuroimaging methods developed in the 1990s, such as positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, which allowed for the detection of changes in blood flow, blood oxygenation, or glucose metabolism in the brain, were also duly adapted to the examination of creativity, with the first empirical studies published in the early 2000s (e.g., Bechtereva et al., 2004; Carlsson et al., 2000; Jung-Beeman et al., 2004; Seger et al., 2000).

Attempts to understand the brain basis of creativity, however, preceded the neuroscience era by several decades. Empirical studies of creativity following a neuropsychological approach, which involves examining the impact of brain disease, dysregulation, and injury on psychological function, date back to the 1940s (e.g., Ashby & Bassett, 1949; Reitman, 1947), and related theoretical works have an even lengthier history (e.g., Holmes, 1929; Jacobson, 1907; Ribot, 1906). All three approaches – electrophysiology, neuroimaging, and neuropsychology – are still employed in contemporary brain research. As we head into the next era of applying a physiology-based approach to the study of human creativity, it is worth taking stock of where we find ourselves at present (Abraham, 2018). In doing so, the purpose of this opinion paper will be to explore three surprising insights that have emerged from the vast body of work on this exciting topic, all of which attest to the essential individuality of the creative mind. The necessity of taking individuality into account in the study of the creative process, by distinguishing between the internal frame of reference of the creating individual and the external frame of reference of the receiving audience, has been recently outlined in a proposal for a new definition of creativity that accommodates both frames: an idea is deemed creative if it is experienced to be both novel and satisfying (Abraham, 2025b).

Intraindividual and Interindividual Differences in Creativity Brain Network Dynamics

One of the many ways in which the empirical study of creativity is different from that of other complex psychological functions (e.g., language, memory), is that it cannot be prompted in a manner that is reliable/consistent or valid/accurate (Abraham, 2013). For example, asking a person to decide whether a ‘teacup’ belongs to the category of ‘clothing’ or ‘crockery’ prompts an answer that can be objectively judged as correct or not (allowing for the estimation of accuracy in performance). By repeating the question, one can examine whether the person's response changes (allowing for the estimation of consistency in performance). In contrast, when examining creativity, asking a person to generate novel ideas for a teacup need not result in the production of ideas that are particularly new. This is because creativity tasks do not merely entail recognition, matching, and comprehension, but instead involve the generation of something new or unexpected from within one's own mind. The fact that novel ideas are neither readily nor necessarily prompted on cue is what the renders the phenomenon of human creativity a fickle one to study. Moreover, giving the same person the same creative task at a later point typically leads to a partially different set of ideas being reported. Add to that the vast differences in responses when examining a group of individuals – both quantitatively (how many ideas each person comes up with) and qualitatively (the specific ideas reported by each person) – and what results is enormous heterogeneity in the datasets from which researchers are tasked with inferring generalizable patterns of findings.

While such variability poses many challenges for scoring measures of creativity (Reiter-Palmon et al., 2019; Saretzki et al., 2024), what's critical to note is that this heterogeneity is a feature of creative thinking, not a bug. As such, it reveals the essential nature of how our minds work when we try to create something new when faced with an open-ended task, which is that no two people come up with the same set of ideas or use the same set of ideational strategies when given such tasks, even when given the same instructional prompts (interindividual variability). What's more, even the same person does not come up with the same number or types of ideas, or even uses the same sets of ideational strategies across multiple settings (intraindividual variability) (Gruber & Kreuzpointner, 2013).

When it comes to the brain basis of creativity, the postulation that novel idea generation necessarily involves the combined engagement of multiple large-scale brain networks was first proposed in the mid-2010s by several scholars (Abraham, 2014, 2016; Beaty et al., 2016; Jung et al., 2013; Mok, 2014) (for an alternative view on the brain basis of creativity proposed at the time, see Dietrich, 2015). All these early proposals agreed on the role of the cognitive control or central executive network (CEN) in creativity, but they differed in other respects. While most of the frameworks emphasized the centrality of the default mode network (DMN) (Abraham, 2016; Beaty et al., 2016; Jung et al., 2013; Mok, 2014), some focused on the importance of the semantic cognition network (SCN) (Abraham, 2014, 2016). Of the proposed frameworks that considered the role played by more than two brain networks in creativity, one emphasized the function of the salience network in switching between the engagement of the DMN and the CEN (Beaty et al., 2016) in line with the known function of this network (Sridharan et al., 2008), while the other emphasized a complex interplay between the DMN, CEN, and SCN when engaging in any type of ideation involving novel combinatorial imagination, such as creative thinking (Abraham, 2016).

Fast-forward to the present day and one finds that these ideas from the mid-2010s have received empirical support, with a large body of evidence affirming the involvement of several regions from diverse brain networks in direct or indirect relation to creative ideation (e.g., Chen et al., 2025; Kenett et al., 2025; Liang et al., 2025). There are, however, important disagreements concerning which specific brain networks are necessarily involved in creativity (e.g., Abraham, 2025a), primarily owing to the fact that so many different intrinsic connectivity networks (such as the DMN) and function-specific networks (such as the SCN) have been implicated. So far, across multiple research labs, creative thinking has been shown to be associated with the central executive network (e.g., Ellamil et al., 2012; Gonen-Yaacovi et al., 2013), the default mode network (e.g., Beaty et al., 2018; Lloyd-Cox et al., 2022), the salience network (e.g., Abraham et al., 2018; Beaty et al., 2015), the semantic cognition network (e.g., Cogdell-Brooke et al., 2020; Ovando-Tellez et al., 2022), and the medial temporal lobe network (e.g., Shah et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2020), among others. The picture gets even more complicated when factoring neuropsychological evidence into the mix (for an overview, see Kutsche et al., 2025).

Given that different research groups diverge considerably in the type of study designs, tasks, metrics, brain networks of focus, and data analysis tools that they employ in their studies (not to mention their theoretical leanings and methodological stances), it is impossible at present to arrive at a clear picture about the neural mechanisms of creative ideation. Nonetheless, it is worth considering whether anything can be at inferred at this stage from this enormously heterogenous picture. I believe there is. By considering a bird's eye view of the neuroscientific evidence as it stands (i.e., dynamic interplay between multiple heterogenous brain networks) in combination with the fundamental nature of creativity tasks (i.e., giving rise to dynamic variability in behavioral performance), an alignment across these planes of examination flies into view. Common to both are the central features of (i) the dynamic nature of the process, and (ii) the variability involved in the brain and behavioral responses.

If we consider the situation from an introspective standpoint, this picture in fact makes perfect sense, as it corresponds to what one would expect given the complex nature of the psychological experiences (i.e., the perceptual, attentional, cognitive, emotional, motivational, and motoric facets) that are inherent to the undertaking of creative tasks. As creativity involves the process of coming up with new ideas or creating an artifact from scratch, and thereby necessitates the engendering of novel or unexpected responses, creative tasks per definition involve grappling with a high degree of uncertainty and changeability that comes with the territory of exploring as-yet unknown or unfolding possibility spaces. The act of creating thereby demands more of the individual, which is particularly apparent when compared to the acts of merely recognizing, recalling, or deriving something known or familiar, which are the typical parameters of experience studied in relation to other complex psychological phenomena (e.g., memory, reasoning) (Abraham, 2013). Abundant evidence speaks to the fact that the more complex a task, the greater the interactions between diverse brain networks, regardless of whether the tasks involve the generation of a creative response or not (e.g., Cohen & D’Esposito, 2016; Hearne et al., 2017; Williams et al., 2022; Zeitlen et al., 2025). The reason that the involvement of multiple brain networks is consistently implicated in neuroscientific studies on creativity is because dynamism and variability are intrinsic to the unpredictable and complex process of creating.

We can take this point a step further. Each of the well-characterized brain networks are attuned to their specific receptive-predictive processing/ideation loop function (e.g., auditory network for sound-based stimuli, salience network for detecting relevant external or internal information). They are automatically activated by their preferred stimuli (e.g., a ringing tone) and trigger a predictive processing cascade that allow for recognition of the stimuli (e.g., the ringtone of my phone) and the preparation of responses, as needed (e.g., answering or ignoring my phone). In contrast, when faced with a creative task (e.g., write a six-lined poem about an umbrella), the process is one of discovery, not of finding the “correct” or the most likely answer. These very same brain networks are thereby co-opted for a different kind of processing/ideation loop function, a generative-explorative one.

Importantly, recall that no two people produce the same set of responses when faced with the same creative task (interindividual variability) and even the same person does not come up with the same set of responses repeatedly (intraindividual variability). This means that the specific dynamics of the interplay between multiple brain networks during generative-explorative thought cycles will not only differ across individuals (e.g., the interindividual variability in the brain responses which occur as Person X creates Poem A that focuses on the imagistic elements of an umbrella, while Person Y creates Poem B about a treefrog who mistook an umbrella for a tree), but also within the same individual (e.g., the intraindividual variability in the brain responses that transpires as Person X writes another poem, Poem C, that is about the many umbrellas over the course of her life that have been destroyed by storms).

Not only do different types of imaginings (e.g., imagery-based in Poem A, abductive/novel-combinatorial in Poem B, memory/intentionality-based in Poem C) evoke variable patterns of brain responses (Abraham, 2016), but early stages of the ideation process also draw on different thought strategies from those that come into play in later stages, even within a single setting (Gilhooly et al., 2007). However, such heterogeneity tends to be ignored in the field of creativity. In our drive to understand what is generalizable across a group of people under study, we disregard that which is individual. This is despite the fact that a person's individuality in terms of their life history, preferences, aesthetic tastes, motivations, and so on, are central to their experience of creating. A better understanding of brain network dynamics in creativity in future work can come from acknowledging both intraindividual and interindividual differences in the experience of undertaking creative pursuits, and by accommodating such factors in experimental designs.

Creativity as a (Relatively) Disorder-Resistant Capacity of the Human Brain

The study of creativity from a neuropsychological approach has resulted in a body of evidence that is challenging to interpret. How we typically infer with some confidence that a brain area is crucial to the undertaking of a particular function is when damage to that brain region (e.g., Broca's area; hippocampal formation) is associated with severe disruptions in a particular function (e.g., inability to produce fluent speech; inability to form long-term declarative memories). In standard neuropsychological scenarios, then, one seeks to link disruptions at the level of physiology with poor behavioral function in a particular domain. In the case of creativity though, the situation is less straightforward because there is abundant evidence demonstrating that diverse neural vulnerabilities are not only associated with reduced creative function, but also with the diametrically opposite outcome of enhanced creative function (for a detailed analysis of this complex phenomenon, see Chapter 5 in Abraham, 2024). How can this be?

One potential answer was postulated within the first publication to report on the intriguing phenomenon of de novo creativity, which is the sudden and unexpected appearance of artistic behaviors following some form of neurological injury. In a groundbreaking paper from 30 years ago, Bruce Miller et al. (1996) reported three cases of de novo creativity, all with the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a neurodegenerative disorder that is physiologically characterized by the progressive atrophying of the frontal and temporal lobes. All three patients had the temporal variant subtype of FTD (where the location of damage centers on the temporal lobes while frontal regions are relatively spared), and all became accomplished painters after the onset of their illness. One patient was described in detail. His symptoms included personality changes, socially inappropriate behavior, and language difficulties, which were accompanied by an increasing proficiency in visual artistic skills for over 10 years between the ages of 56 and 67. Although his artistic output declined in quality after that point, the patient still showed superior proficiency in generating novel designs upon instruction at the age of 68 when examined for the study. This was despite the fact that he had moderate cognitive impairment and semantic anomia. Throughout this period of neurological decline, the patient also exhibited a heightened sensitivity to light and was particularly drawn towards colors and sounds in his immediate surroundings.

The authors concluded the following (Miller et al., 1996, p. 1745): “We speculate that loss of anterior temporal lobe systems involved with inhibiting posterior visual cortex led to intense unfiltered visual experiences including visual memories. Heightened visual sensitivity may have served as a motivation for painting.” The drive to artistry here is thereby explained by (1) enriched access to ongoing visual experience as well as past visual memories, both of which are encoded and stored in our minds from (2) the unique personal perspective of the experiencing individual. That a breakdown in top-down processing (owing to damage in association cortices, which are brain regions involved in higher-order processes like cognitive control) would result in privileged access to lower-level sensory information, and thereby potentially elicit a release of extraordinary skills, was similarly proposed to explain the emergence of savant-like skills (Snyder, 2009).

In the decades that followed, the phenomenon of de novo artistic creativity has been confirmed in relation to multiple variants of FTD (Friedberg et al., 2023) as well as other neurological conditions, including Alzheimer's disease, stroke, epilepsy, and savant syndrome (Chatterjee, 2004; Schott, 2012). De novo creativity typically occurs after the acute progressive phase of such disorders but then declines before eventually disappearing. The following insights can be derived from this complex body of research at this juncture. First, the type of brain injury differs from case study to case study. In fact, there is no single brain region that has been consistently implicated across all the studies that have examined de novo creativity. Second, a high degree of variation is also seen in relation to behavioral findings, as the specific type of de novo artistic expression being exhibited also differs from case study to case study. Existing (premorbid) differences between any two individuals in term of their sensitivities and sensibilities, which shape their experiences in the world through dynamic bottom-up (sensory information-based) and top-down (prior knowledge-based) interactions, diverge even further post-brain injury, as no two patients have exactly the same type of brain injury nor the same level of neural compensatory processes (Sacks, 1995; Vygotsky, 1993).

Improved psychological function following neurological compromise is generally referred to as “paradoxical functional facilitation” (Kapur, 1996, 2011). This phenomenon has been well-documented in different types of sensory loss (e.g., vision, audition), which are associated with extensive neuroplasticity and improved perceptual abilities in unaffected sensory modalities (e.g., Merabet & Pascual-Leone, 2010; Singh et al., 2018). In the case of creativity, the large collection of case studies of famous artists who developed brain disorders in their lifetimes generally show that the vast majority continued to create art following brain injury (e.g., Bogousslavsky & Boller, 2005; Bogousslavsky & Hennerici, 2007; Finger et al., 2013). They were often less productive than before and even changed styles or mediums (Pelowski et al., 2022), but, notwithstanding the cases that were marked by amotivational symptoms, debilitating pain, or severe motor impairment, most artists maintained an artistic practice, even while their speech, reasoning, and problem-solving abilities steadily declined.

What this indicates is that, when compared to other aspects of complex psychological function, creativity is relatively disorder-resistant (Zaidel, 2013). And this is likely owed to the multiple realizability of the human brain, a concept from the field of philosophy of mind (Bickle, 2020), which has its counterparts in neurological concepts of reorganization in intra-functional and inter-functional systems of the brain following damage (Luria, 1963). The mechanisms that underlie the structural and functional reorganization of neural pathways (i.e., through brain plasticity) that occurs in response to brain injury parallel those that underlie the acquisition of novel and complex skills through learning experiences over the course of child development and maturation over the lifespan (Mikadze, 2014) (see next section). Arne Dietrich has applied these ideas to the context of creativity: “… multiple realizability refers to the idea that creativity can be realized by a wide variety of standard mental processes, properties, states, events, neural mechanisms, or their combination … there is likely an innumerable array of coordinated patterns at several levels of the functional system of the brain that could support the computation of a novel, useful, and perhaps surprising outcome” (Dietrich, 2024, p. 6).

An instantiation of the multiple realizability principle is illustrated by the case of aphantasia, which refers to an inability to voluntarily generate visual imagery. While people with aphantasia are less likely to find themselves in arts, design, entertainment, sports and media-related professions (Zeman et al., 2020), the inability to visualize does not exclude aphantasics from engaging with and achieving highly in artistic professions. For instance, Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar is aphantasic, and so is Glen Keane, who was the animator of The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991) (Gallagher, 2019; MacKisack, 2021). In the words of the renowned aphantasia scholar Adam Zeman, “… we shouldn’t confuse visualisation with imagination, the far broader capacity, to represent, reshape and reconceive things in their absence. Imagination can certainly make use of imagery – but it doesn’t have to” (Zeman, 2021).

Now that we know more about the what and the how behind the relative disorder-resistant capacity of creativity, the final question to consider is the why. Why do some people persist with creative pursuits despite (or as a consequence of) undergoing neurological challenges? What is fueling their need for artistic engagement? This largely remains an open question because our biological drives towards creative behaviors have only been limitedly explored (Flaherty, 2004, 2018). As the emergence of de novo artistic abilities typically occurs in the context of some form of language dysfunction, one hypothesis is that it may reflect the need to communicate or express oneself (Zaidel, 2014). Given that “creativity would at least be an expression of this person, a sufferer, a communication of the inner life” (Geser et al., 2021, p. 290), the necessity of bringing in the role of individuality into the wider discussion thereby arises in this research domain as well.

The Efficacy of Creative Practices for Neuroprotection and Neurorehabilitation

The promise of creative arts-based practices in providing unique avenues by which health and wellbeing can be facilitated through treatment and rehabilitation is now widely recognized (e.g., Fancourt & Finn, 2019; Jensen & Bonde, 2018; Levy et al., 2025; National Organization for Arts in Health, 2017; Serlin et al., 2007). A vast body of evidence has accumulated from several scientific disciplines (e.g., epidemiology, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology) that directly speak to the capacity for such practices across modalities of experience (e.g., visual, musical, kinesthetic, literary) in improving outcomes across the lifespan at multiple levels: mental health, physical health, and community health (e.g., Barnett & Vasiu, 2024; Brown et al., 2022; Stuckey & Nobel, 2010).

Such advances in the collective understanding of the power of the creative arts has developed with the recognition that the process of healing is a complex one, which is most effectively realized when the recovery process extends beyond physical care to include principles and practices that cater to a patient's psychological wellbeing (e.g., Gouin & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2012; Myers & Benson, 1992; Wilson et al., 2001). This is where the potential of the arts in terms of its holistic impact comes into play. Arts-based practices provide unique opportunities in the healing process, as they offer a variety of pathways for individual expression, personal growth, and human connection (Allen & Richards, 1995; McNiff, 2004). The benefits of employing such practices is now evidenced across multiple clinical settings (Fancourt, 2026).

Arts-based practices are often characterized as “neuroprotective” or “neurorehabilitative” in their workings. Neuroprotection refers to processes that foster the relative preservation of the integrity of neurons and other parts of the neurovascular unit (e.g., astrocytes, pericytes) to enable their continued physiological functions (Farooqui, 2022). Engaging in regular physical exercise, for instance, confers neuroprotective effects (e.g., reduced risk for dementia: Hamer & Chida, 2009), via physiological mechanisms such as better cerebral blood flow, lower inflammation, and greater neuroplasticity (Tari et al., 2025). Similarly, regular engagement in arts-based activities enhances cognitive preservation, psychological resilience, and flourishing in elderly populations (e.g., Candeias & Galindo, 2022; Galassi et al., 2022; Zábó et al., 2023). While the specific physiological underpinnings of such effects are still unclear, similar mechanisms (e.g., brain plasticity) have been proposed to explain neuroprotection in the context of creative practices.

The practice of creative arts has also been examined in the context of neurorehabilitation, which is the recovery or improvement of physical and cognitive function following neurological impairment, through engagement in targeted therapeutic interventions. Visual art-based therapies are used across a broad range of clinical contexts (Kaimal, 2022) and are associated with several positive outcomes, such as enhancing cognitive and emotional function in the context of dementia (Zhao et al., 2025). Expressing oneself through writing by hand, which engages a more extensive set of neural circuits than typing (Marano et al., 2025), also improves rehabilitative outcomes across cognitive, emotional, and social planes of function in cases of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia (Hajikarim-Hamedani et al., 2025). Various dance artforms are increasingly utilized as dual tools for promoting cognitive and brain health, particularly in the context of aging (neuroprotective) as well as in service of cognitive and motor recovery in neurodegenerative and neurological disease (neurorehabilitative) (Barnstaple, 2021; Hackney et al., 2024).

The efficacy of the creative arts in service of neuroprotection and neurorehabilitation stems from the fact that such practices engender brain plasticity through the active and complex engagement of a broad palette of multisensory, attentional, cognitive, and motor capacities that evoke complex emotional and motivational states. This is why, for instance, learning to play a musical instrument from a young age (as well as throughout one's lifespan) is associated with robust neuroprotective effects. Regular practice continually promotes neuroplasticity through the strengthening of multimodal brain pathways (Schlaug, 2015; Wan & Schlaug, 2010). Music making is therefore widely used as an intervention tool to improve brain and cognitive function in healthy people (Balbag et al., 2014; Marie et al., 2023), as well as in the treatment of clinical disorders (Altenmüller & Schlaug, 2015). In aphasia, for example, melodic intonation therapy is highly promising in facilitating the improvement of speech function (Popescu et al., 2022; van der Meulen et al., 2012). In fact, recent work shows that music listening, music making, and musical training “induce neuroplastic changes by modulating neurogenetics, enhancing neurotrophins, altering hormonal levels, and reducing stress in humans” (Kunikullaya et al., 2025, p. 2).

There is now growing recognition that artistic practices provide a distinctive avenue for behavioral interventions through their potential for uniquely galvanizing engagement with the recovery process and affording meaningful personalization (Morgan, 2025). It is this unique feature of the therapeutic effect that comes with engaging in artistic activities that leads to the Michelangelo Effect (Iosa et al., 2022), which reflects how “being involved in an aesthetically meaningful activity (such as making or observing art) positively influences skill learning and execution, motivation, and perception of effort” (Calderone et al., 2025). Here too the need to factor in individuality arises, especially as tailoring rehabilitative practices to fit with the recovery needs of the individual, their aesthetic preferences, and their sociocultural milieu, helps improve the efficacy of arts-based interventions (e.g., Hajikarim-Hamedani et al., 2025; Liu et al., 2024).

Concluding Thoughts

As we head towards the next 50 years of neuroscientific research on creativity, future scholars stand to gain from being open to a space of broader discourse, where the empirical focus moves beyond its roots in the psychometrics of intelligence testing, and embraces what is intrinsic to the phenomenon of creativity – the capricious, complex, and deeply subjective nature of the experience. This will be particularly necessary in the current age of artificial intelligence (AI). After all, as we outsource ever more of our cognitive capacities to generative AI tools, we stand to destroy the key advantages that active creative practices bestow to our human minds (e.g., neuroprotection), which only come from effortful engagement that serves to develop our unique capacities. The time to come to terms with the inherent individuality of creativity is therefore now.