Updating the dynamic framework of thought: Creativity and psychedelics
This theoretical paper (2020) refines the ‘Dynamic Framework of Thought’ to characterise the neurocognitive processes underlying creativity. It proposes that the psychedelic state represents a unique mental state with high potential for facilitating creative generation by influencing the interplay between constraints and variability in thought.
Authors
- Robin Carhart-Harris
- Leor Roseman
- Manesh Girn
Published
Abstract
Contemporary investigations regard creativity as a dynamic form of cognition that involves movement between the dissociable stages of creative generation and creative evaluation. Our recently proposed Dynamic Framework of Thought (Christoff et al., 2016) offered a conceptualization of these stages in terms of an interplay between sources of constraint and variability on thought. This initial conceptualization, however, has yet to be fully explicated and given targeted discussion. Here, we refine this framework’s account of creativity by highlighting the dynamic nature of creative thought, both within and between the stages of creative generation and evaluation. In particular, we emphasize that creative generation in particular is best regarded as a product of multiple, varying mental states, rather than being a singular mental state in and of itself. We also propose that the psychedelic state is a mental state with high potential for facilitating creative generation and update the Dynamic Framework of Thought to incorporate this state. This paper seeks to highlight the dynamic nature of the neurocognitive processes underlying creative thinking and to draw attention to the potential utility of psychedelic substances as experimental tools in the neuroscience of creativity.
Research Summary of 'Updating the dynamic framework of thought: Creativity and psychedelics'
Introduction
Creative thinking is increasingly understood as a dynamic process that requires movement between distinct cognitive modes rather than a single uniform mental state. Girn and colleagues situate creativity within their previously proposed Dynamic Framework of Thought (DFT), which casts spontaneous cognition as sequences of mental states that differ in the degree and type of constraints acting on thought. The framework distinguishes deliberate constraints (goal-directed, executive control) from automatic constraints (bottom-up influences such as sensory or affective salience), and maps these onto proposed neural systems including frontoparietal control regions and default-network subsystems. Responding to gaps in the original formulation, the paper sets out two related aims: first, to refine the DFT by emphasising the dynamic variability both between and within the stages of creative generation and creative evaluation; and second, to incorporate the psychedelic state into the DFT as a candidate mental state that may particularly facilitate creative generation. The authors argue that clarifying these dynamics matters for designing experiments that link neural measures to the phenomenology of creative thought and for using psychedelics as experimental tools in creativity research.
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Girn, M., Mills, C., Roseman, L., Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Christoff, K. (2020). Updating the dynamic framework of thought: Creativity and psychedelics. NeuroImage, 213, 116726. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116726
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