| Creativity is a high-ordered cognitive function that is unique to human beings.It plays a crucial and even decisive role in human development and progress,as well as in individual success.Creativity is the ability to combine a system of stored knowledge to produce ideas and products that are novel and useful.Individual knowledge and experience have an important influence on creativity,so it can be said that the output of creative ideas is the result of the co-fermentation of their knowledge and experience and creative thinking ability.Semantic memory network is the main representation of semantic memory structure or conceptual system,which stores our knowledge and experience about the meaning of words and the knowledge of the world.At the theoretical level,the concepts represented in the semantic network are the "raw materials" necessary for the creative cognitive process,and their organizational structure directly determines the connection between concepts,while the concepts themselves are the operational objects of the creative cognitive process.At the practical level,the constantly developing network scientific methods in recent years provide a powerful methodological framework and quantitative tools for the study of creativity.Researchers can discuss the internal relationship and mechanism between semantic network and creativity respectively from the perspective of semantic network structure and semantic-related cognitive operations.But both semantic networks and creative processes are influenced by activity of related brain regions,making their relationships more complex.In addition to explore the relationship between semantic network and creativity from the perspective of behavioral research,to explore their relationship from the neural mechanism perspective can help to further understand the complex relationship between the two.At present,the empirical research on the creativity of semantic network mainly focuses on how the structure of semantic network affects creativity.One study used free association tests to construct group-level semantic networks for high-and low-creativity groups.Group comparison results show that compared with the low creative group,semantic network of high creative group shows higher small-worldness,lower average shortest path length and lower degree of modularity,suggested that the semantic network structure of high creative individuals can more effectively promote the information transmission,so as to enhance the ability to combine remove concepts and to produce creative ideas.There have been many studies on the semantic network in English or Hebrew and other foreign languages.It is still necessary to further explore whether there are similar results in the semantic network in different Chinese languages.At present,the research is still on the level of behavior,and the neural basis of semantic network's influence on creativity is still unclear,which limits the more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the relationship between semantic network and creativity.Therefore,this series of research recruit college students to explore the relationship between the structural properties of semantic network and creativity from both the group level and individual level.Secondly,the neural basis of the relationship between semantic network structure and creativity is explored from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience.Study 1 aims to reveal the semantic network structure characteristics of highly creative individuals.Starting from the group level,this study first used the free association paradigm to collect the free association responses of 90 college students in the same college to 96 cue words within one minute for each,and then constructed the group-level semantic network of the highand low-creativity group by using the method of "co-occurrence frequency of response words".Then the graph theory is used to calculate the graph measures of the two group-level semantic networks,such as average shortest path length,modularity,global efficiency and small-worldness.Finally,the author compares the network measures of the two group-level semantic networks,so as to find out the unique semantic network structure characteristics of the high creatives.The results show that compared with the low-creativity semantic network,the high-creativity semantic network has a shorter average shortest path length and a smaller modularity coefficient,while it also has a larger clustering coefficient,small-world attribute and global efficiency.Together,these results show that semantic networks of highly creative individuals are more interconnected,integrated,and efficient,enabling them to more flexibly and efficiently retrieve and link remote concepts from semantic memory networks,thus producing creative ideas.This finding is in line with research expectations and existing findings.The second study aims to explore the influence of semantic network structure on creativity from the individual level.Considering the reason of time cost,study 2 selected 48 of the 96 clue words in study 1.First,the similarity scoring task was used to ask the subjects to rate the semantic similarity between each two words in the 48 cue words,and the semantic network at the individual level was constructed according to the result of the similarity scoring.Secondly,graph theory is also used to calculate the graph measures of each individual semantic network,such as average shortest path length,modularity,global efficiency and small-world attribute.Finally,the graph theory measures are correlated with the creativity score to explore the influence of semantic network structure characteristics on the creativity process from the perspective of individual differences.The results show that the average shortest path length,network diameter and modularity of individual semantic networks are negatively correlated with creativity,while the small-world properties and global efficiency are positively correlated with creativity.The results are basically consistent with the results in the first study,which jointly show that the more flexible,integrated and efficient the organization structure of individual semantic network is,the better the individual's creative thinking will be.Based on the above behavioral research results,the third part of the study attempts to explore the neural mechanism of semantic network's influence on creativity.In the third study,the resting state fMRI brain imaging data were firstly collected,and then the BOLD signal intensity of these brain regions was extracted according to the brain regions related to semantic processing network identified by literature review.Finally,a moderation model is built between the semantic network attributes,the intensity of the semantic processing brain network and the creativity.The results showed that the average BOLD signal strength of the semantic processing brain network moderated the relationship between modularity of the individual semantic network and creativity.Moreover,the negative correlation between modularity and creativity of semantic network is stronger for individuals with weak semantic processing network activities.The results show that the relationship between semantic network and creativity is more complex than that revealed by behavioral research and is influenced by the semantic processing network activity of the brain.Moreover,for individuals whose brains are not good at processing semantic information,the modularity of semantic network has a stronger inhibitory effect on creative thinking.In summary,the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of semantic network structure on creativity and its underlying neural mechanism.Firstly,the group level study finds that the semantic network of highly creative individuals has a shorter average shortest path length and a smaller modularity coefficient,as well as a larger clustering coefficient,small-world attribute and global efficiency.Secondly,based on the analysis of individual level,it is found that specific attributes of semantic network,such as small-world attribute and global efficiency,can promote creativity,while the average shortest path length,network diameter and modularity coefficient can inhibit creativity.From this research,it can be concluded that semantic network with smaller average shortest path length,network diameter and modularity,as well as larger small-world attribute and global efficiency can better promote the output of individual creative thinking.Again,based on the brain function analysis found that the individual differences on semantic processing brain network(including inferior frontal gyrus,anterior and posterior temporal gyrus,angular gyrus,fusiform gyrus and temporal pole)activities affect the relationship between semantic network structure and creativity;Especially for individuals who are not good at processing semantic information,the degree of semantic network modularity has increasingly inhibited creative thinking.Overall,this study explores the relationship between semantic network structure characteristics and creativity its underlying brain mechanism,helps to fully understand the creativity and the relationship with the semantic memory system,this research provides more supportive data and insight. |
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