Creativity and innovation are integral to progress, yet neurocognitive mechanisms underlying creative thought remain unclear. This EEG study examined gender differences in brain activation during verbal and figural creative thinking tasks in 20 adults (10M, 10F). Participants completed verbal (Ask-and-Guess, Just Suppose) and figural (Unusual Uses) divergent thinking tasks from the Abbreviated Torrance Test while EEG was recorded. Analyses examined default mode, executive control, and salience network activity across frequency bands. Results revealed subtle gender differences in network activations and interactions during creative ideation. Females exhibited greater frontoparietal coupling, indicating enhanced cognitive flexibility. Males displayed higher default mode synchronization, suggesting greater persistence within an imaginative space. Findings provide initial neural evidence for specialized neurocognitive profiles between genders, with female advantages in flexible divergent thinking and male strengths in focused conceptual exploration.
Top1. Introduction
Creativity and innovation are integral to human progress and advancement across virtually all domains. Creative thinking allows us to generate novel ideas, make new connections between concepts, and envision alternative possibilities (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2010). Innovation builds upon creativity by applying those novel ideas to develop useful products, services, or processes that can transform society (Amabile et al., 1996). Understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms that give rise to creative and innovative thinking has been a long-standing goal across many disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, education, business, and the arts.
One rapidly growing area of research is examining potential gender differences in creative cognition and underlying brain activity. A wealth of behavioral studies conducted over the past few decades indicates subtle differences in the creative thinking abilities of men and women, particularly in divergent thinking which involves generating multiple alternative ideas or solutions to open-ended problems (Abraham, 2016). However, behavioral measures provide limited insight into the precise neural processes involved. Recent advances in neuroimaging techniques like electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) now allow researchers to directly measure brain activity during creative tasks and analyze gender-specific patterns (Morande, 2022; Sowden et al., 2015). Uncovering the neurocognitive basis of creativity, including any average differences between male and female brains, can help maximize creative potential in education, business, science and beyond (Morande et al., 2022).
As Abraham (2016) discusses, characterizing gender distinctions in creative cognition is crucial for developing tailored educational programs and workplace environments that optimize inherent strengths while also developing complementary abilities in both men and women. However, most existing neurological research on creativity has not specifically examined or controlled for potential gender effects.
While there have been studies that used neuroimaging to compare how the brains of men and women are activated during tasks the results have been inconsistent and limited (Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2013). In an EEG study, Silberstein et al. (2019) emphasized that most of the research, on creativity in neuroscience has focused primarily or exclusively on participants. This creates a gap in our knowledge considering the wealth of evidence pointing to gender differences in creative thinking abilities and styles. We need studies that directly investigate and compare how creativity manifests in the brains of both men and women using techniques like EEG and fMRI. By expanding this area of inquiry, we can gain insights into the factors that may contribute to variations in how males and females approach creative challenges based on their inherent strengths and tendencies. While it’s important to note that no single brain profile can fully define cognition for all individuals within a gender understanding any neural patterns can help us develop targeted creativity training programs tailored to diverse needs and capabilities. As argued by Onarheim & Friis-Olivarius (2013) comprehending gender patterns of activity during key stages of the creative process can also guide us in refining educational methods and tools aimed at nurturing the innate innovative potential present, within every student.