Well, it seemed that creative people were more introspective.

This led to
increased self-awareness, including a greater familiarity with the darker
and more uncomfortable parts of themselves. It may be because they
engage with the full spectrum of lifeboth the dark and the lightthat
writers score high on some of the characteristics that our society tends to
associate with mental illness. Conversely, this same propensity can lead
them to become more grounded and self-aware. In openly and boldly
confronting themselves and the world, creative-minded people seemed to
find an unusual synthesis between healthy and pathological behaviors.

Instead, the study showed that creativity is informed by a whole host of

intellectual, emotional, motivational and moral characteristics. The
common traits that people across all creative fields seemed to have in
common were an openness to ones inner life; a preference for complexity
and ambiguity; an unusually high tolerance for disorder and disarray; the
ability to extract order from chaos; independence; unconventionality; and
a willingness to take risks.

Describing this hodgepodge of traits, Barron wrote that the creative genius
was both more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more
constructive, occasionally crazier and yet adamantly saner, than the
average person.

This new way of thinking about creative genius gave rise to some
fascinatingand perplexingcontradictions.

Such contradictions may be precisely what gives some people an intense

inner drive to create. As psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said after
more than 30 years of observing creative people: If I had to express in
one word what makes their personalities different from others, its
complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most
people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of
being an individual, each of them is a multitude.

Today, most psychologists agree that creativity is multifaceted in nature.

And even on a neurological level, creativity is messy.

Contrary to the right-brain myth, creativity doesnt just involve a single

brain region or even a single side of the brain. Instead, the creative
process draws on the whole brain. Its a dynamic interplay of many
different brain regions, emotions, and our unconscious and conscious
processing systems.
The brains default mode network, or as we like to call it, the imagination
network, is particularly important for creativity. The default mode
network, first identified by neurologist Marcus Raichle in 2001, engages
many regions on the medial (inside) surface of the brain in the frontal,
parietal and temporal lobes.

We spend as much as half our mental lives using this network. It appears
to be most active when were engaged in what researchers call self-
generated cognition: daydreaming, ruminating, or otherwise letting our
minds wander.

Creative people are able to juggle contradictory modes of thought

cognitive and emotional, deliberate and spontaneous.

The functions of the imagination network form the core of human

experience. Its three main components are personal meaning-making,
mental simulation, and perspective taking. This allows us to construct
meaning from our experiences, remember the past, think about the future,
imagine other peoples perspectives and alternative scenarios, understand
stories, and reflect on mental and emotional statesboth our own and
those of others. The imaginative and social processes associated with this
brain network are also critical to developing compassion, as well as the
ability to understand ourselves and construct a linear sense of self.

But the imagination network doesnt work alone. It engages in an intricate

dance with the brains executive network, which is responsible for
controlling our attention and working memory. The executive network
helps us focus our imagination, blocking out external distractions and
allowing us to tune in to our inner experience.

The creative brain is particularly good at flexibly activating and

deactivating these brain networks, which in most people are at odds with
each other. In doing so, they are able to juggle seemingly contradictory
modes of thoughtcognitive and emotional, deliberate and spontaneous.
This allows them to draw on a wide range of strengths, characteristics and
thinking styles in their work.
Perhaps this is why creative people are so difficult to pin down. In both
their creative processes and their brain processes, they bring seemingly
contradictory elements together in unusual and unexpected ways.