Acute Stress Affects Cognitive Neural Mechanisms Of Creative Thinking

Promoting the creativity development is not only an urgent national demand for education,but also a major topic of common concern to the international community and academia.With the dramatic changes in society and the rapid economic development,stress becomes an inescapable lifestyle.Using creativity to solve problems under stress will become a new indicator of talent.The COVID-19 viruses have swept the world,adding enormous psychological pressure to the human.Conventional anti-epidemic measures are powerless to eliminate the threat of virus,and how to creatively solve the epidemic situation may be the most important issue at this moment.In recent years,researchers have paid more and more attention to exploring the relationship between stress and creativity.This study attempts to explore the relationship between stress and creativity from the perspective of cognitive mechanisms,which can not only help relieve stress and improve individual creativity,but also provide theoretical support for the exploration and cultivation of the innovative talents.Stress affects many cognitive functions,such as memory,inhibition,executive function and creativity.Among them,the inhibition function reflects the individual's ability to process information and is closely related to the individual's advanced cognitive function.As the most advanced cognitive function,creativity is also closely related to the inhibitory function.In this study,we used evidence from physiological,psychological,behavioral,ERP,and EEG data to explore the mediation mechanism of cognitive inhibition and response inhibition in the acute stress effect on the creative cognitive processing.In Study 1,we explored the cognitive mechanism of stress on cognitive inhibition and response inhibition.We used 2(pre-test,post-test)x 2(cognitive inhibition,response inhibition)two factors within-subject design.We chosed the standard Trier Social Stress Test and the salivary cortisol as the physiological index to evaluate the stress state and the PANAS questionnaire as the psychological index to evaluate the stress state.The hybrid No Go Flanker task was used to measure individual cognitive inhibition and response inhibition.The results showed that stress could impair the cognitive inhibition ability,but have no effect on the response inhibition.This may be because response inhibition demand continuous cognitive resources devoted and individuals have subjective adjustment ability.It could collect more cognitive resources during the processing of response inhibition,offsetting the impairment effect of stress.Study 2 explored the cognitive neural mechanism of stress on creative thinking.We used 2(pre-test,post-test)x2(cognitive inhibition,response inhibition)two factors within-subjects design.We chosed the standard Trier Social Stress Test and the salivary cortisol as the physiological index to evaluate the stress state and the PANAS questionnaire as the psychological index to evaluate the stress state.The hybrid No Go Flanker task was used to measure the individual's cognitive inhibition and response inhibition.The alternative use task was used to evaluate the individual's creativity,using EEG technology to analyze the synchronization of alpha waves.The results showed that after acute stress the fluency score and the flexibility score were decreased but the originality score was increased.The desynchronization of alpha wave activity after acute stress was related to the impairment of cognitive inhibition,supporting the creativity inhibition hypothesis.Due to the enhancement of alpha desynchronization activity after acute stress,the brain was in the state of high inhibition,leading to poor information processing ability and unable to complete the task,thus the fluency score and the flexibility score were decreased.There was interaction effect between stress and bilateral temporal lobe brain area,and the synchronization of alpha wave in bilateral temporal lobe was more coordinated after acute stress.The temporal lobe brain area was closely related to the generation of novel ideas.The coordination of bilateral brain areas could promote creativity.These may be the reasons for the improvement of individual originality after acute stress.In summary,acute stress could impair cognitive inhibition,but have no effect on response inhibition.It may be due to the subjective regulation ability offsetting the impairment effect of stress on response inhibition.After acute stress,the alpha wave desynchronization activity was enhanced,leaving the brain in high inhibition state which is not conducive to the top-down information processing mode,and impaired cognitive inhibition ability,so that the performance of creativity was decreased supporting the inhibition hypothesis of creativity.We also found that stress can improve the originality of creativity,which may be related to the better coordination of alpha synchronization activities in the bilateral temporal lobes after stress.