“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.
An active researcher neuroscientist and clinician neuropsychologist, who also has a keen interest in history, Elkhonon Goldberg offers an original, and arguably the first coherent account of how multiple brain mechanisms come together in order to culminate in the creative act. While a large body of scientific material is discussed, the book offers much more than a mere review. It presents a novel understanding of how the creative process takes place, and is full of original insights challenging current assumptions and theories.