The anatomy of creativity

Creativity combines elements of emotion, planning and sensory perception. Furthermore, creative expression can involve linguistic, graphic and/or motor skills as well. Since the frontal lobes control higher order skills, like the planning of a series of actions, the organization of a composition (see our discussion of executive functions for more detail) as well as motivation and drive to produce, they are necessarily involved in some components of creative thinking. Sensory perception, however, is distributed throughout the brain. Generally, touch is in the parietal lobes, vision in the occipital lobes and hearing, taste and smell are in the temporal lobes. The wide range of creative expression and creative personalities we see reflects the broad involvement of the brain. Individuals vary in their strengths and weaknesses which leads to inherent differences in creativity. Changes in any of these pathways can result in increased, decreased or changed creativity.