Bridging Fields in Creativity Research

Creativity is an essential human trait that is defined by the formation of novel and useful ideas and concepts. It has been identified as a key factor for progress and advancement in various areas of our daily lives. Current research on creativity has made great advances using cognitive and psychological approaches. However, progress in the field is still hampered by heterogeneous conceptualizations and operationalizations of creativity. Furthermore, the foundation of creativity on the level of neuronal networks that would offer a deeper understanding of creative processes remains elusive. We firmly believe that a deeper insight of the general neural processes underlying creative thought has potentially huge implications for the understanding of human and eventually also non-human brain as well as artificial neuronal networks.

Due to this void of knowledge, combined with a growing need for creative thinking, we organize an interdisciplinary conference of total two days length to bridge different fields of creativity research. We bring together leading experts on creativity from different scientific disciplines to discuss unifying approaches to operationalize creativity, investigate its neural mechanisms and develop theoretical and experimental concepts to probe and corroborate such mechanisms, especially on the level of neuronal networks. For this reason, we provide an interdisciplinary framework for the conference and bring experts from cognitive science together with systems neuroscientists as well as experts from computer science. Participants of the conference will have the chance to integrate their own research into a translational and multidisciplinary framework of creativity. Thus, we are confident that all subject areas will benefit from this interconnection by developing approaches that span and link multiple research disciplines.