Abstract:

Creativity is the fountainhead of human civilizations. All progress and innovation depend on our ability to change existing thinking patterns, break with the present, and build something new. As we all known that creativity is not only refers to a creative ability, but also a kind of advanced cognitive activities. Because of the central of the creativity is the divergent thinking, the present review focuses on the divergent thinking which can be described as the process or ability to generate new and creative ideas to given open problems. We review the studies which carried out the Alternative Uses Test is the prototypical example of a divergent thinking task as much as possible, It requires participants to generate alternative uses for, for instance, a brick or a pair of scissors. Consequently, we conclude the divergent thinking processing contains of three stages: informationretrieval, information selection and information integration. While Humor is an universal but unique phenomenon of which the studies have a considerable applied value. Humor is an important high-level cognitive activity that plays a crucial role in social life and also impacts various psychological and physiological phenomena. According to the Wyer and Collin's comprehension–elaboration theory of humor, humor processing contains of comprehension and elaboration, and the comprehension refers to the detection and resolution of incongruities. The Cognitive Neuromechanisms’ investigation of divergent thinking and humor hence strive to unveil the specific neural processes leading to creative thought and humor comprehension. In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how a phenomenon can occur in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Therefore, we compare the cognitive neuromechanisms of the divergent thinking and humor in a dual-processing perspective. Generally speaking, the two processes consist of the automatic process which is unconscious and the controlled process which is conscious. Through the present review, we can found that the similarity of the cognitive process of the divergent thinking and humor, which all involve the dual-processing. And the initial stage of the two cognitive processes privilege to the automatic process, but in the later, as the higher cognitive load, more difficult tasks, and the two cognitive processes more privilege to the controlled process. While as for the both brain mechanisms’ comparing, we found that under the controlled process both overlap neural mechanisms are much larger than the overlap under the automatic process. Moreover, the prefrontal cortex which takes charge of the controlled process is the key mechanism to the divergent thinking and humor processing. Future research could focus on the cooperation of the dual processes, on the one hand, it can reveals the internal mechanism of the divergent thinking and humor, on the other hand, it can also promote the divergent thinking and humor more efficiently in practice level.

摘要：

在双加工理论视角下对发散性思维与幽默的认知神经机制进行了系统整理。发现二者的认知加工过程具有相似性：前期都依赖于自动化加工；而后期随着认知负荷的增加，越来越依赖控制化加工。脑机制方面：控制化加工条件下，二者的神经机制重叠部分比自动化加工条件下多，其中负责控制化加工的前额皮层是二者共同的关键脑区。未来可从两类加工协同合作的角度深入揭示发散性思维与幽默的内在机制。