Creativity : The Human Brain in the Age of Innovation

"Creativity: The Human Brain in the Age of Innovation" is about creativity, one of the most cherished and mysterious manifestations of the human mind, and what it is in the human brain and its interaction with culture, that allows us to expand how we think about things, generate new knowledge, and to explore unchartered territories. Based on a growing body of scientific literature, Elkhonon Goldberg points to several brain structures and processes that are involved in the creative process: the frontal lobes, the right and left hemispheres and their respective contributions, subcortical structures, various biochemical systems, and intricate neural network processes that work in concert for the creative act to happen. To that end, he discusses the brain mechanisms of deciding what is important and what is not; of confronting cognitive novelty; and the marshalling of previously acquired knowledge to generate new insights culminating in a creative product.

What is the nature of human creativity? What are the brain processes behind its mystique? What are the evolutionary roots of creativity? How does culture help shape individual creativity? Creativity: The Human Brain in the Age of Innovation by Elkhonon Goldberg is arguably the first ever book to address these and other questions in a way that is both rigorous and engaging, demystifying human creativity for the general public. The synthesis of neuroscience and the humanities is a unique feature of the book, making it of interest to an unusually broad range of readership. Drawing on a number of cutting-edge discoveries from brain research as well as on his own insights as a neuroscientist and neuropsychologist, Goldberg integrates them with a wide-ranging discussion of history, culture, and evolution to arrive at an original, compelling, and at times provocative understanding of the nature of human creativity. To make his argument, Goldberg discusses the origins of language, the nature of several neurological disorders, animal cognition, virtual reality, and even artificial intelligence. In the process, he takes the reader to different times and places, from antiquity to the future, and from Western Europe to South-East Asia. He makes bold predictions about the future directions of creativity and innovation in society, their multiple biological and cultural roots and expressions, about how they will shape society for generations to come, and even how they will change the ways the human brain develops and ages.