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» Expertise in the arts

The idea to promote interaction of artists and brain imaging researchers is very appealing. Art is a great method to understand the brain and the human interaction with a vivid and fantastic world. Art helps the brain to interconnect emotion, senses, the motor system and cognition. It is a wonderful opportunity not only for helping us to understand brain function but also enrich human life and enable long term brain physiology in the healthy and impaired brain. People who have achieved high expertise in arts are often characterised by specialised brain function and tight interaction of sensorimotor but also cognitive brain processes.

Sinfony of the synapses: Watch the report on our latest project for handwriting and creativity: www.leuchtturm1917.de/wnt-interview/ep4-martinlotze/

Creative writing
M. Lotze, C. Kessler, Nicola Neumann and H.J. Ortheil
Former PhD-Students: Katharina Erhard and Carolin Shah

In cooperation with the University of Hildesheim (Prof. Ortheil and Prof. Porombka) and the Neurological Institute of Greifswald (Prof. Kessler).
Cerebral areas which are involved in Creative Writing are rather unclear and cerebral involvement in highly trained participants has never been investigated. Creative-performance-relevant skills are dependent on domain-specific knowledge and ‘talent‘, but also training and task motivation. We investigated twenty students of Creative Writing and Culture Journalism and 28 students from various other fields of study with fMRI-scanning. Participants performed the following tasks 'reading' a given text, 'copying' a part of the text, 'creative brainstorming', and 'creative writing' of a new own continuation of the given text. Additionally, all subjects passed the verbal creativity test of Schoppe (1975), which assessed their Creativity Index (CI).
Correlation analysis with CI highlighted the importance of the left temporal pole and the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 44) for verbal creative processes.

2016: PHD-award of the University of Greifswald for Dr. Katharina Erhard for our work on neural correlates of creative writing

Literature:
Neumann, N., Domin, M., Erhard, K., & Lotze, M. (2018). Voxel-based morphometry in creative writers: Grey matter increase in a prefronto-thalamic-cerebellar network. The European journal of neuroscience, 10.1111/ejn.13952.
Neumann, N., Lotze, M., Eickhoff, S.B. (2015) Cognitive expertise: an ALE meta-analysis. Human Brain Mapping, 37(1):262-72.
Lotze, M., Erhard, K., Neumann, N., Eickhoff, S., Langner, R (2014) Neural correlates of verbal creativity: Differences in resting-state functional connectivity associated with expertise in creative writing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8:516.
Erhard, K., Kessler, F., Neumann, N., Ortheil H.-J., Lotze, M. (2014) Professional training in creative writing is associated with enhanced fronto-striatal activity in a literary text continuation task. Neuroimage, 100:15-23.
Shah C*., Erhard K*., Ortheil H.-J., Kaza E., Kessler C., Lotze M (2013) Neural Correlates of Creative Writing: An fMRI study. Human Brain Mapping, 34(5):1088-101 (*equal contribution).

Foto: nordlicht für focus 10.2009

Press-links:
Report about our study published in Neuroimage on Creative writing 5th of July 2014 in the "Munich eye":
www.themunicheye.com/news/Wired-for-imagination-2906

20.6.14: Report in the recent New York Times about our article on creative writing:
www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/science/researching-the-brain-of-writers.html?action=click&contentCollection=Science®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

Drawing a portrait
Which perceptive processes are essential to specify characteristics of a face or to draw an artistic human face?
The aim of our research is to investigate these questions with regard to the cerebral representation during drawing.
In cooperation with the Caspar David Friedrich Institute in Greifswald we are investigating which areas are involved in drawing a portrait in experts and in non-professionals.