The flip side of cognitive decline is cognitive improvement, and further along the spectrum lies the phenomenon of creativity. Some creative abilities are innate or genetic, like musical skills, but learning and practice are necessary to develop such talents. Associative thinking, which is controlled by the parahippocampus and parts of the frontal lobe, involves taking a new piece of information and linking it to another piece of data that lies stored in memory. We all do this from time to time, but the creative person tends to do it more often and can sometimes take big leaps by connecting ideas that many would consider to be quite distinct and separate. The creative individual recognizes the
importance of this new connection, builds on it, and is off and running.
Einstein’s Brain
Therefore, from a theoretical perspective, the association areas in the parahippocampus and the frontal lobes should be better developed in highly creative people. The initial autopsy evaluation of Albert Einstein’s brain revealed that it was a normal size, and the association areas in his cerebral cortex were not large. But a recent reexamination showed that his brain lacked the Sylvian fissure, which borders the temporal lobe, and had a slight enlargement in the lower part of the temporal lobe near the association areas. These results were given big play in the media, but they don’t really resolve any issues. Maybe Einstein wasn’t the best prototype to study, because he made quantum leaps to develop entirely new fields virtually from scratch, leaving bread-and-butter associative
thinkers behind in the dust. Maybe the unique connections within his brain were simply beyond the detection capability of standard neuropathologic methods.
The Nobel Prize: Old Winners, Young Winners
In general, aging does have a negative impact on creativity, and this is probably due to the decay in association cortex nerve cells over time. Nobel Prize winners invariably complete their groundbreaking work in their thirties and forties, although the rest of the world may take a few
decades to catch on and give them their just reward. But creativity does not disappear as you grow older. Rather, it gets modified by a lifetime of experience that results in your balancing new ideas with common sense and judgment, leading to what is commonly called wisdom. As a matter of fact, some people continue to be creative even after developing severe memory loss. After Willem de Kooning developed Alzheimer’s disease, he remained a productive painter into his eighties and nineties. The quality of his paintings changed, and the precise line of his brush strokes became blurry. The art critics, who were unaware of his brain disorder, announced a new creative phase in the painter’s career.
Taken From: The Memory Program How to Prevent Memory Loss
and Enhance Memory Power
