Abstract
DA VINCI In Da Vinci’s mind: Fundamental Correlates of Creativity for Artists and Scientists The study of creativity is essential for the understanding and development of the growth of human knowledge. This is ever more urgent today, as humanity is faced with unprecedented challenges: climate change, sustainability, geo-political uncertainty, and growing inequality. Both the World Economic Forum (WEF, 2019) and the OECD (2018) have recognized the need to develop creativity as a fundamental skill, starting from the younger generations. Despite rare examples of exceptional success in multiple knowledge domains (see Leonardo Da Vinci), historical examples as well as research evidence clearly show that creativity is domain-specific, i.e., it is expressed differently in diverse domains. In particular, the scientific and artistic domains are taken as extreme examples of the different phenomenological expressions of creative thinking. There are in particular two fundamental research questions which are still open: which are the functional and neural mechanisms that characterize and distinguish scientific versus artistic creative performance and achievement? Which is the optimal balance between creativity and intelligence to succeed in these two domains? In fact, a direct neurophysiological comparison of creativity in these two domains is lacking and clear evidences of the different neural correlates to creativity for artists and scientists are very scant. In the same way, rare evidence exists on the relationship between intelligent and creative behaviors in scientific and artistic contexts. The aim of the DA VINCI project is to fill these crucial gaps by systematically exploring the differences and commonalities in creative thinking performance and creative achievement in arts and science both from a neurophysiological and from a behavioral point of view. To this purpose, three WPs will be carried out with the main goals to: 1) analyse the core neural characterization of creative cognition in artists and in scientists. Based on the EEG methodology, a systematic exploration of the brain temporal dynamics associated with performance in diverse creative thinking tasks will be analysed in participants from scientific and artistic domains. Moreover, the spontaneous cerebral dynamics of a brain in resting state associated with the creative success in arts and science will be explored. 2) analyse the differential weight of intelligence and creativity according to the nature of the context in science and the arts. By an exploration of different conceptual spaces in arts and science characterized in terms of looseness and tightness, the explanatory role of intelligence and creative abilities to succeed in several scenarios within scientific and artistic domains will be explored. 3) define a theoretical and empirically testable model to explain, through a structural equation modelling approach, the role of brain dynamics, connectivity, creative abilities, intelligence and context in defining creative success in the arts and science.
Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Giovanni Emanuele Corazza
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Energia Elettrica e dell'Informazione "Guglielmo Marconi"
Coordinator:
Università degli Studi di TRIESTE(Italy)
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 84.196,00
Project Duration in months: 24
Start Date:
05/10/2023
End Date:
28/02/2026
