So sorry to have left such a big cliff-hanger - hope no one has lost sleep wondering "What is the Bad(ass) technology that Dr. Rex Jung talked about?" Of course, it is imaging technology - that super-power that now sees faster than the blink of an eye, more deeply than the TSA, and is able to track brain activity in any task. Through imaging of people who produced multiple ideas during a creative task, Jung and others have cataloged the anatomy of the creative brain.
So, what are the brain characteristics corresponding to heightened creativity? As you might suppose, there are certain areas of the brain that are thicker, both in grey (active) and white (insulating) matter. But I was surprised to learn that other areas are actually thinner. In particular, the frontal lobes of highly creative people are thinner than average. What's going on here? Well, as high school teachers know, the late-developing frontal lobes are the parts that control judgment, sequencing and the "if. . . then" logic that understands the consequences of our actions - as Dr. Jung says, the "ready, aim, fire" part of the brain.
But, for all the importance of these logical traits in self-control, time management, and task completion, they can be the death of creative ideas. To allow creative ideas to flow, we need to suspend these judgment kinds of activities, put seemingly unrelated ideas out on the table of our mind and play around to see what combinations can happen. Of course, we need to bring these activities back once we have our new idea in order to actually bring it to fruition, meet our deadline, etc. Again, we need both sides of our brain to get it done (back to Eric Jensen & post #3!). So we don't want to permanently turn off our frontal activity, just to temporarily dial it down - hence the name Transient Hypo-Frontality.
I thought of two educational uses for this right away. The first, I'm sure you've all seen - that kid who just can't seem access any ideas because they are already censored before s/he is even conscious of them. Sally Fitt at U of Utah used to call this analysis paralysis. I've seen kids in every school clam up like this, and no amount of shi-shi artsy talk or trust-building activity can penetrate that shell. After all, if my inner critic is in hyper-mode, it is going to scoff at any touchy-feely-artsy-fartsy stuff. So if you see this, you now can offer an appropriately analytical reason to ease up - and because you are talking to an analytical part of the brain, what you say just might get through.
Second, this just reinforces the practice of many arts teachers who strictly disallow put-downs in their class communities. Just this last year at FAIR, I had a conversation with members of a choir that were acting out a disagreement through harsh criticism of one another. I asked who had been proud as Kindergartners to bring artwork home and have it put up on the fridge. They all nodded, smiling at the warm memories. Then I asked whether they still did this - they looked shocked! I asked when it stopped. As is often the case, they said some time around 4th or 5th grade. Why? Because they got teased about it, started thinking about it, and stopped feeling like they were any "good" at art. Try having this conversation with any group of high school or middle school students - unless they are the kids in the advanced Visual Art class, they will be able to trace for you the development of their inner critic. Vis Arts kids will be able to do the same if you ask them about singing outside the privacy of the car or shower. The point is, we educators have to do what we can not to over-build that frontal lobe as it relates to allowing creative, unregulated thought.
A corollary to this is that when schools and teachers emphasize compliance and task management at the expense of creation and elaboration of ideas, they again run the risk of hyping those frontal lobes.
Finally, I'm indebted to a Kindergarten teacher who was seated in the front row for raising a nuts-and-bolts school issue. She raised her hand to tell her sad story and ask advice: apparently, all teachers in her school were now required to post the minute-by-minute daily schedule of class activities. She had been able to comply with this until a recent dictum that they were to forgo the use of the word, play. As an experienced early childhood educator, she knew that play is the work of young children - but she needed some theory to legitimize it. What Dr. Jung had just said seemed to back her up - they need to let their minds wander through unstructured play.
"Do you have any advice for me?" she asked.
"Transient Hypofrontality," responded Dr. Jung in his best James Earl Jones voice-over of God.
In the exchange that followed, Dr. Jung clarified how the brain not only comes up with creative ideas, but consolidates ideas and makes connections during times of play or other unregulated activity - walks in the park, a bubble bath, yoga class, doodling, you name it. The teacher vowed to go back to school and put up her schedule, proudly displaying the activity, Transient Hypofrontality.
Next time - More on how we consolidate learning and why Martha Graham had her neuroscience right when she said that it takes 10 years to make a dancer.
Meanwhile - What else can you think of that we do to potentially overdevelop those frontal lobes?
Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts
Friday, August 12, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Teaching Thru the Prism 3: Neuroscience of Creativity
OK, if you don't already follow Dr. Rex Jung, you should. He studies the Neurobiology of Creativity at the University of New Mexico. A man after my own heart, he started with the top 3 myths of popular brain science, each with a wacky, yet memorable made-up name:
1. You have to be a genius to be creative (plebophobia) - the idea that there's a bell-shaped curve with Einstein at one end and Homer Simpson on the other is flat out not true; in his research with undergrads "in the middle of the curve," everyone has creative capacity.
2. You have to be crazy to be creative (mentallyillophillia) - again, just not true. While there have been many people who have struggled with mental illness and who also have demonstrated great creativity, there are also many who have not, and just as many who do not have a mental illness but are highly creative. Personally, I find that creative activity is what keeps me sane. My sister, a therapist, once told me that the creative process as I described it was much like the process of coming out of an episode of mental illness - you have an idea, you listen to others' critique of it, you take in what you think is right and reject the rest, and move on with your idea. I also think that this is one myth we really need to fight because parents who believe this are not likely to expose their children to arts education!
3. Horribly Overinterpreting Research Regarding Neurosurgical Interventions (HORRNI) - this is the myth that the the brain is neatly split into a creative (right) and an analytical (left) hemisphere. The Neurosurgical research had to do with severing the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres. In epileptic patients who had had this intervention, all sorts of interesting things were noted about which hemisphere took over control of what. However, for the rest of us whose brains are intact, there is a real collaboration between the two hemispheres. In creative work, we may imagine things more on one side, but we need the other side to plan and execute their design. And, all along, impulses are firing back and forth between them. Those of you who attended the MN Retreat for the Arts at Perpich in '06 heard a similar message from Eric "You name it-ing With The Brain In Mind" Jensen. Take home point is that developing all sides of the brain as much as we can will strengthen our creative capacity.
From the Ugly Myths he went on to the Good and the Bad(ass).
There were three important parts to the Good:
First (and aligned with #3 above) is that Creativity has both Emotional and Cognitive domains that cross Spontaneous and Deliberate processes. OK, this completely fits with the old Essential Learnings: something Emotional and Deliberate might be the work of a playwright, say, Tony Kushner, whose Angels in America has a highly emotional impact on the audience, but went through a deliberate process from idea to manuscript to produced play. Emotional and Spontaneous might be someone like Miles Davis, improvising to create an emotional connection between himself and his audience. Cognitive and Spontaneous might be someone like Robin Williams on Letterman's couch coming out with spontaneous commentary on the day's events or the previous guest's remarks. Cognitive and Deliberate creativity might be Einstein working through one of his "thought experiments."
Second - To have a brilliant idea, you need to have lots of ideas. Scott Weston, early VSAA Photo teacher used to say this about photos - to get a good one, you need to take lots of them. Apparently there's a Picasso web site that has now cataloged over 20,000 works by him. They were not all Guernica.
Third - and this goes along with Plato's ideas about teaching by Uncovering (previous post) - In the cycle of creative production, there need to be 4 elements:
Preparation (read: skill acquisition)
Incubation (mulling it around)
Illumination (AHA!)
Verification (hypothesis testing - is it novel? useful? matching the intent?)
According to Dr. Jung, schools are spending way too much time and energy on Preparation and Verification, when what kids need is more downtime for Incubation in order to uncover their AHA!
Well, laundry calls - getting Nat ready for his hike through northern Spain! Next time I'll go over the Badass technology that has uncovered the brain processes (or lack thereof) that coincide with creativity.
1. You have to be a genius to be creative (plebophobia) - the idea that there's a bell-shaped curve with Einstein at one end and Homer Simpson on the other is flat out not true; in his research with undergrads "in the middle of the curve," everyone has creative capacity.
2. You have to be crazy to be creative (mentallyillophillia) - again, just not true. While there have been many people who have struggled with mental illness and who also have demonstrated great creativity, there are also many who have not, and just as many who do not have a mental illness but are highly creative. Personally, I find that creative activity is what keeps me sane. My sister, a therapist, once told me that the creative process as I described it was much like the process of coming out of an episode of mental illness - you have an idea, you listen to others' critique of it, you take in what you think is right and reject the rest, and move on with your idea. I also think that this is one myth we really need to fight because parents who believe this are not likely to expose their children to arts education!
3. Horribly Overinterpreting Research Regarding Neurosurgical Interventions (HORRNI) - this is the myth that the the brain is neatly split into a creative (right) and an analytical (left) hemisphere. The Neurosurgical research had to do with severing the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres. In epileptic patients who had had this intervention, all sorts of interesting things were noted about which hemisphere took over control of what. However, for the rest of us whose brains are intact, there is a real collaboration between the two hemispheres. In creative work, we may imagine things more on one side, but we need the other side to plan and execute their design. And, all along, impulses are firing back and forth between them. Those of you who attended the MN Retreat for the Arts at Perpich in '06 heard a similar message from Eric "You name it-ing With The Brain In Mind" Jensen. Take home point is that developing all sides of the brain as much as we can will strengthen our creative capacity.
From the Ugly Myths he went on to the Good and the Bad(ass).
There were three important parts to the Good:
First (and aligned with #3 above) is that Creativity has both Emotional and Cognitive domains that cross Spontaneous and Deliberate processes. OK, this completely fits with the old Essential Learnings: something Emotional and Deliberate might be the work of a playwright, say, Tony Kushner, whose Angels in America has a highly emotional impact on the audience, but went through a deliberate process from idea to manuscript to produced play. Emotional and Spontaneous might be someone like Miles Davis, improvising to create an emotional connection between himself and his audience. Cognitive and Spontaneous might be someone like Robin Williams on Letterman's couch coming out with spontaneous commentary on the day's events or the previous guest's remarks. Cognitive and Deliberate creativity might be Einstein working through one of his "thought experiments."
Second - To have a brilliant idea, you need to have lots of ideas. Scott Weston, early VSAA Photo teacher used to say this about photos - to get a good one, you need to take lots of them. Apparently there's a Picasso web site that has now cataloged over 20,000 works by him. They were not all Guernica.
Third - and this goes along with Plato's ideas about teaching by Uncovering (previous post) - In the cycle of creative production, there need to be 4 elements:
Preparation (read: skill acquisition)
Incubation (mulling it around)
Illumination (AHA!)
Verification (hypothesis testing - is it novel? useful? matching the intent?)
According to Dr. Jung, schools are spending way too much time and energy on Preparation and Verification, when what kids need is more downtime for Incubation in order to uncover their AHA!
Well, laundry calls - getting Nat ready for his hike through northern Spain! Next time I'll go over the Badass technology that has uncovered the brain processes (or lack thereof) that coincide with creativity.
Teaching Thru the Prism Part 1
This is a series I started on my Facebook page as notes last month. I've transferred the first three and will continue on this site:
Just finished day 1 of a great Arts Integration summit held by the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. For those who can't quite place that name, Phillips was the gallery that lent In the American Grain to the Portland Art Museum back in 1995-96, the year Vancouver School of Arts and Academics (VSAA) opened. (VSAA based that entire year of integrated curriculum around that collection of work by the Stieglitz group). Coincidentally, the keynote speaker was Eric Booth, who also key-noted VSAA's Origins national conference on Creativity in Education back in 2002.
Booth was the highlight of the day. He had several great points:
1. Verbs vs. Nouns - the more we talk about the nouns of arts integration, the more divisive we'll be and the shallower the projects can get. The more we stick with the verbs, the processes, the deeper it will be and the more authentically we'll be able to connect with other disciplines. Not that we didn't know this, but the verbs/nouns language makes it easy to explain to newbies.
2. The Law of 80% - OK, Booth admitted he made up the statistic, but my gut feeling is he's got it about right. The gist is, teaching is 80% about you, the teacher - what you bring in terms of interest, knowledge, passion, etc. Now, there's some actual research about the zone of flow for learners - halfway between anxiety and boredom. Booth's contention is that at any given time, a few members of your class will fall out of motivation because they are bored and a few more because they are too frustrated - it's too hard. But, if they sense that you love them, that 20% will self-correct back to what you are doing. The frustrated kids will give themselves permission to drop out a few details that are hanging them up, and the bored kids will add a few bizarre twists of their own to keep it interesting.
I love this part because of the way it intersects with critical race theory as practiced at the FAIR Schools and elsewhere - it's all about relationships. And, that doesn't mean you have to keep it easy or safe to stay in relationship with a kid - what you have to do is put energy into the relationship before the work gets hard, so they will have a reason to come with you when it does.
More tomorrow about Plato's theories of learning and the roots of the word, "Bravo!"
Just finished day 1 of a great Arts Integration summit held by the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. For those who can't quite place that name, Phillips was the gallery that lent In the American Grain to the Portland Art Museum back in 1995-96, the year Vancouver School of Arts and Academics (VSAA) opened. (VSAA based that entire year of integrated curriculum around that collection of work by the Stieglitz group). Coincidentally, the keynote speaker was Eric Booth, who also key-noted VSAA's Origins national conference on Creativity in Education back in 2002.
Booth was the highlight of the day. He had several great points:
1. Verbs vs. Nouns - the more we talk about the nouns of arts integration, the more divisive we'll be and the shallower the projects can get. The more we stick with the verbs, the processes, the deeper it will be and the more authentically we'll be able to connect with other disciplines. Not that we didn't know this, but the verbs/nouns language makes it easy to explain to newbies.
2. The Law of 80% - OK, Booth admitted he made up the statistic, but my gut feeling is he's got it about right. The gist is, teaching is 80% about you, the teacher - what you bring in terms of interest, knowledge, passion, etc. Now, there's some actual research about the zone of flow for learners - halfway between anxiety and boredom. Booth's contention is that at any given time, a few members of your class will fall out of motivation because they are bored and a few more because they are too frustrated - it's too hard. But, if they sense that you love them, that 20% will self-correct back to what you are doing. The frustrated kids will give themselves permission to drop out a few details that are hanging them up, and the bored kids will add a few bizarre twists of their own to keep it interesting.
I love this part because of the way it intersects with critical race theory as practiced at the FAIR Schools and elsewhere - it's all about relationships. And, that doesn't mean you have to keep it easy or safe to stay in relationship with a kid - what you have to do is put energy into the relationship before the work gets hard, so they will have a reason to come with you when it does.
More tomorrow about Plato's theories of learning and the roots of the word, "Bravo!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)