In 2005, neuroscientist Alice Flaherty presented an interesting three-factor anatomical model for creative drive and ideation based on communication between the temporal lobes, frontal lobes and limbic system. Supporting earlier studies which showed minimal relations between creativity and intelligence (Torrance, 1974), Flaherty’s chart (above) aims to rotate the traditional hemispheric models of creativity by 90°, arguing that connections between the frontal lobes and temporal lobes are more important than those between the left and right hemispheres.’¹ Contrary to most neuroscientific studies of language which focus on skill acquisition, Flaherty highlights the importance of the limbic system in genertating ideas, drawing her conclusions from a much broader range of subjects, not only surgically treated epileptics.

I accept that ‘not all aspects of this model have yet been tested’, however Flaherty’s 3-factor model may not extend far beyond the hemispherical model she aims to counter. I would argue that many similar reductionist approaches emerge from the wrong world-view. The creative process can not simply be reduced to an (internal) limbic urge to express oneself, like the hypergraphia she experienced in response to the death of her own premature twins.² The intensly mediated nature of C21 life directly challenges the notion of thought as skin or skull-bound (Clark, 1995), indeed current research into digital networks aim to show how cognition extends across a range of media (O’Hara, 2006). Therefore monitoring how media inhibit chaotic disequilibrium³ in the human brain may be equally critical in further understanding creative block and its related effects.

1. Alice Flaherty, Frontotemporal and dopaminergic control of ideal generation and creative drive, J Comp Neurol. 2005 December 5; 493(1): 147–153

2. Alice Flaherty, The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain, (Clarion, 2004)

3. David Bohm & David Peat, Science, Order, and Creativity. (Bantam 1987)