Middle occipital area differentially associates with malevolent versus benevolent creativity: An fNIRS investigation

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to explore the neural correlates underlying idea generation during malevolent creativity (MC) using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Participants were asked to solve problems during three types of creativity tasks: malevolent creativity task (MCT), benevolent creativity task (BCT), and alternative uses task (AUT). fNIRS was used to record individual cerebral activity during the tasks. The results revealed that participants demonstrated weaker neural activation in the right middle occipital area (rMO) and lower neural coupling (NC) between the right frontopolar cortex (rFPC) and rMO during MCT than during BCT and AUT. These suggest that r-MO activity and NC between the rFPC and rMO may distinguish between malevolent and benevolent forms of creative ideation.

KEYWORDS:

• Creativity
• malevolent creativity
• fNIRS
• functional connectivity

Acknowledgments

This work was sponsored by the Humanity and Social Science foundation of Ministry of Education of China (17YJA190007) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31971002) to NH.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31971002]; Humanity and Social Science foundation of Ministry of Education of China [17YJA190007].