Event-related Brain Potentials Distinguish Stages Of Processing In Creative Perception

Novelty can be seen everywhere in our daily life. For instance, a surprising costumes, a novel sculpture, an astonishing scene of advertisement and so forth. They are all very attractive and capture attention automatically. Only total realized them in a new way could comprehend their deep meanings. Therefore, novelty processing gains a large amount of researches. Recently, a lot of works related novelty reveal its brain activity by means of fMRI and event-related potentials (ERPs). The novel stimuli employed in current perception studies merely novel and do not have semantic meanings. However, novel stimuli are of semantic information are used merely to investigate patients. In this study, we would investigate the perception of creative objects in normal population.Experiment1is to investigate the time stages and neural correlates in the course of processing of creative animals and plants relative to common animals and plants processing by using ERPs method. Our behavioral data indicated that reaction time for creative creatures was significant longer than ordinary creatures. Our ERP results showed that creative creatures elicited an enhanced positivity between170-220ms relative to common creatures over parietal sites. Dipole analysis localized the generator of N170-220in the left Brodmann area8. We inferred that during the time stage reflected early structures encoding. We observed between660-740ms, parietal mean amplitude is more positive for creative stimuli than ordinary stimuli. Dipole source analysis was mainly generated in the Brodmann area32. This creative creatures’ combinations of distant concepts may breaks the viewer’s semantic background, thus the conflict comes out. The last wave difference was observed for creative and ordinary creatures at1300-1420ms over parietal scalp regions. The dipole analysis was conducted on the difference wave in this time window. Dipole was located in the medial frontal cortex. We suggested that the process reflected decision-making and decision making.Experiment2employed pictures of creative objects as creative stimulus material. The study is designed to investigate the perceptual time course of the creative devices and neural activity relative to common devices. Analyses revealed that creative devices elicited a more negativity than ordinary devices with a parietal distribution from190to290ms. Dipole solutions showed that the generator of this N2component is located in the right Brodmann area9. We thought this time window reflected primary encoding structure of creative devices in working memory. Later, we found a late component emerged from400to800ms over parietal sites. The localization software used was originated in right superior frontal gyrus (SFG) and medial frontal gyrus (MFG). These remote connections might beyond individuals’ semantic knowledge. So, during this time window semantic conflict arises. Last, the amplitude of the waveforms demonstrated that creative devices elicited a greater late positive component than ordinary devices from1380to1650ms over frontocentral sites. Source localization analyses revealed that in the right hemisphere inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and anterior cingulate contribute to the late positive slow waves. Participants need to integreate the creative device and make a response.