Creativity and your brainCreativity and your brain
All In The Mind
We humans have ‘creative software’ in our brains—so says neuroscientist and author David Eagleman. We're driven to invent and innovate, yet at the same time we’re attracted to the familiar—and our creativity lives in that tension.
29:20•20 Jan 2019
Creativity and Your Brain: Why Everyone Runs "Creative Software"
Episode Overview
- Human brains have extra "space" between input and output, allowing us to simulate futures and generate novel ideas.
- Creativity often follows three processes: bending, breaking and blending existing information to form new combinations.
- Successful creative work balances novelty with familiarity so it can be understood and accepted by others.
- Access to arts and creative schooling is strongly tied to socioeconomic status, limiting many people’s chances to realise their creative potential.
- Simple changes in routine and choosing to create rather than buy ready-made items can help keep your brain actively creative.
“"All kids are equally creative. This is just how the human brain works. This is what brains do."”
Curious about how your brain cooks up new ideas? This episode of All In The Mind puts human creativity under the microscope, with neuroscientist Professor David Eagleman explaining why our species is constantly tinkering, inventing and remixing. You’ll hear why he thinks we all run "creative software" that makes us restless and pushes us to keep reshaping the world.
Host Lynne Malcolm talks with Eagleman about the extra "thinking space" in the human cortex and prefrontal cortex, which lets us chew over ideas, simulate futures and try things out in our heads before acting. That’s what separates humans from animals who mostly live by reflex: as Eagleman puts it, humans "keep bootstrapping their civilisation" generation after generation. The episode spends time on Eagleman and composer Anthony Brandt’s favourite trio of creative moves: bending, breaking and blending.
From NASA’s improvised fixes on Apollo 13 to Picasso’s La Demoiselle d’Avignon, from DNA sequencing to a spider-silk-producing goat nicknamed Freckles, you’ll get vivid examples of how brains "take in information and mash it up" to make something new. There’s a strong focus on education and opportunity too. Eagleman notes that "all kids are equally creative" yet chances to use that creativity are tightly linked to socioeconomic status.
Cutting arts programmes, he argues, wastes a crucial training ground for bending, breaking and blending ideas that later powers science, technology and engineering. The conversation also touches on AI-generated art and music, why human judgement still matters, and how creative people cluster together to test what "sticks" socially. To make it practical, Eagleman shares simple ways to jolt yourself out of autopilot—like driving a different route home or making your own greetings card instead of buying a generic one.
If you’ve ever thought creativity was for geniuses only, this chat might have you asking: how could you bend, break or blend something in your life today?
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