创造性思维和语言能力在大脑中的"竞争"

According to the New Scientist on December 17, the thinking is that areas for Language and creativity compete in the brain, which might explain why some people with brain damage suddenly become artistic, a new research suggests。

To better pinpoint the areas involved in creative thinking, Simone Shamay-Tsoory, from the University of Haifa, Israel, and her team compared 40 people with damage in the brain, and a group without any damage。

As well as having their brains scanned, the two groups were shown 30 identicAl circles on a piece of paper and given five minutes to draw as many different pictures of meaningful objects as they could, each of which had to include at least one circle。

Although they were unable to check volunteers' levels of creativity before brain damage, the results suggest that levels of originality directly relate to where in the brain the damage has happened. Those who scored significantly higher than healthy volunteers in originality had more damage to the left side of the brain, in areas responsible for processing language. Those with the lowest scores tended to have more damage to the right side of the brain, in an area involved in planning and decision-making。

"(Language)regions may compete with the right hemisphere's ability to produce creative ideas," Shamay-Tsoory says. This would explain why, when these language areas are damaged, originality seems to increase。

据《新科学人》12月17日报道，一项新的研究发现，语言能力和创造力在大脑中相互“竞争”，这种想法可以用来解释为什么有些人大脑受损后，却突然变成艺术家。

为了明确大脑哪些区域跟创造性思维有密切联系，来自以色列海法大学的Simone Shamay-Tsoory和她的研究小组进行了一项研究，他们将40个大脑有损伤的人编为一组，和另外大脑没有损伤的一组人进行比较。

研究人员对这两组人分别进行大脑扫描，另外，再给他们一张印有30个相同圆圈的纸观察，让他们在五分钟内尽可能画出有不同涵义的物体，而且每个物体至少得包括一个圆圈。

研究人员虽然无法判断志愿者在大脑受损前的创造性水平。但是研究结果表明，创造性水平跟大脑受损区域有直接联系。左脑受损的人们明显要比大脑没有受损的人们得分高，左脑主要负责帮助人们理解语言。右脑受损的人们一般得分较低，右脑主要帮助人们规划和决策制定。

Shamay-Tsoory 说：“大脑(语言)区域可能要与右半脑竞争，抑制右脑产生创造性思维”。这样以来，就可以解释，当人们大脑语言区域受损时，他们的创造性思维似乎有所增加。