Gray Matter Volume Of The Lingual Gyrus Mediates The Relationship Between Executive Function And Divergent Thinking

Creativity can be defined as the production of a novel,useful,and surprising solution to a complex problem and is crucial to several aspects of human life.Divergent thinking(DT),the essence of creative thinking,is a complex process that is regulated by multiple cognitive and neural factors.At present,on the creativity itself and have a preliminary understanding about its internal mechanism.Many researchers believe that in the process of creative ideas the individual needs to avoid the creation of ordinary ideas,combine unrelated concepts as much as possible,and then produce creative ideas.Thus it can be seen that executive control function may be a core factor affecting creative ideas.However,there are few studies on how the executive control affects creativity and how such impact works,and the conclusions of existing research are also inconsistent.Therefore,on the basis of previous research,this project attempts to further reveal the neural mechanism of how executive control affect creativity,so as to provide theoretical and practical guidance to future cultivation and promotion of creativity.Based on previous theoretical research and experimental research,the project explore the relationship between executive control and divergent thinking and the neural mechanism of how executive control affect creativity.In study one,participants comprised 128 right-handed healthy subjects.They finished the Stroop color–word-interference task,three modified product-improvement tasks and the Combined Raven's Test-Rural in China.Magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)data were acquired with a 3T scanner.Structural magnetic resonance images were processed with SPM8 software.We extracted six cortical ROIs from the Automated Anatomical Labeling atlas using the WFU Pick Atlas Toolbox.The ROIs(hippocampal,parahippocampal,lingual gyrus,precuneus,cuneus,inferior frontal gyrus)were identical to those used in previous studies of structural correlation networks.The present study used mediation analysis to classify the associations between GMV of classical regions located in TOP areas,inhibition function,and DT.The results showed two main findings: poorer inhibition function was associated with increased lingual gyrus volume,which in turn was associated with better DT performance;and the lingual gyrus GMV mediated the relationship between inhibition function and DT.Study two explore the the relationship between Updating and divergent thinking and the neural mechanism of how Updating affect creativity.In study two,participants comprised 128 right-handed healthy subjects.They finished the 3-back task,three modified product-improvement tasks and the Combined Raven's Test-Rural in China.Magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)data were acquired with a 3T scanner.Structural magnetic resonance images were processed with SPM8 software.A simple mediation analysis was employed using SPSS macro with a.95 confidence level and 5000-bootstrap sample.We used 3-back scores as the independent variable,DT as the dependent variable,and GMV of lingual gyrus as mediators.To further investigate the effects of inhibition and GMV on facets of DT,we set up several models for originality and fluency,wherein originality and fluency of DT tasks were used as dependent variables.Results indicate that poorer updating was associated with increased right lingual gyrus volume,which in turn was associated with better DT performance;and the right lingual gyrus GMV mediated the relationship between inhibition function and DT.In summary,the present findings—lingual gyrus volume mediated the relationship between executive function and DT—are important because they potentially explain the influence of executive function on DT through the posterior cortex.Limited research has simultaneously examined executive function,brain structure,and DT behavior to identify their interrelationships and the mechanisms through which executive function influences DT.The results provide novel evidence for the role of executive function in creative thinking by its influence on the amount of information stored in long-term memory.However,longitudinal studies are needed to establish the long-term impact of lingual gyrus volume and the direction of influence in our model.