The Science of Creativity & How to Enhance Creative Innovation

[Huberman Lab]

In this episode, I explain how the brain engages in creative thinking and, based on that mechanistic understanding, the tools to improve one’s ability to think creatively and innovate in any area. I discuss how convergent and divergent thinking are essential for generating creative ideas and provide three types of meditation tools (open monitoring meditation, focused attention meditation & non-sleep deep rest; NSDR), which improve our ability to engage in these creative thinking patterns in specific and powerful ways. I also discuss how dopamine and mood contribute to the creative process and describe behavioral, nutritional and supplementation-based approaches for increasing dopamine to engage in creative thought and implementation. I explain how movement and storytelling (narrative) approaches can generate novel creative ideas and how substances like alcohol, cannabis, and psilocybin impact our creative ability. Excitingly, creativity is a skill that can be cultivated and enhanced; this episode outlines many tools to help anyone access creativity and apply creative patterns of thought to different domains of life.

For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com.

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Timestamps​

(00:00:00) Creativity

(00:04:47) Sponsors: AG1, LMNT, Waking Up

(00:08:51) What is Creativity?

(00:11:16) Creativity in Visual Arts, Escher & Banksy

(00:23:37) Neural Circuits of Creativity

(00:27:54) Sponsor: AG1

(00:33:13) Creative Ideas & Divergent Thinking

(00:42:09) Testing Creative Ideas & Convergent Thinking

(00:46:41) Dopamine, Convergent & Divergent Thinking Pathways

(00:58:06) Tool: Open Monitoring Meditation & Divergent Thinking

(01:07:38) Tool: Focused Attention Meditation & Convergent Thinking

(01:11:06) Mood, Creativity & Dopamine

(01:16:00) Tool: Mood Calibrating, Caffeine & Dopamine

(01:23:41) Dopamine Supplementation; L-Tyrosine, Caffeine

(01:30:15) Tool: Non-Sleep Deep Rest, Mesocortical Dopamine & Divergent Thinking

(01:43:13) Serotonin, Psylocibin & Creative Thinking

(01:49:13) Alcohol & Autobiographical Scripting; Cannabis

(01:52:04) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) & Creativity

(01:54:45) Tool: Movement & Divergent Thinking

(02:01:02) Tool: Narratives & Storytelling for Creativity

(02:14:47) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Momentous, Neural Network Newsletter, Social Media

Disclaimer

Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac

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