What is creativity? Many of us would agree that it's the ability of our minds to invent something new and wonderfully different.
Neuroscientists, using advanced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have looked into the brain to observe how creativity occurs. They found dopamine darting between neurons in pathways that eventually result in either a moment of perception or imagination.
Our eyes, ears and other senses transmit a vast array of ambiguous information to our brains. For perception, our brains follow a pathway that makes order out of chaos based on our past experiences and learned expectations. With imagination, the pathway takes a different trajectory and we no longer assume the obvious. It's like Magritte's icon of modern art, "This is not a pipe." We see something new in something we've seen countless times before.
Neuroscientists discovered that by the sixth time we encounter any combination of stimuli, our brains turn the pathway into a superhighway that processes and interprets with utmost efficiency. The path is set. Perception replaces imagination. The pipe is a pipe.
To engage in imagination and creativity, our brains need to move from the path of least resistance to the path not yet taken. We need to change the context of how we automatically categorize by experiences and disrupt that direct path to perception. When is a pipe not a pipe?
When our brains are challenged by stimuli they've never encountered previously, they invent new pathways. If we continually open ourselves to new information and experiences—and we open our minds to see things differently—our frontal cortices will create detours on the perceptual pathway that will lead us to new conclusions. We actually can reprogram ourselves to be more creative.
In our case, we began to look at the creative process and agency/client relationships differently. Our neural pathways left the straight and narrow. New ideas were unleashed. New opportunities came. We evolved into Red Lizard Creative.
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