Neural Expression of Creativity in Real and Augmented Reality Environments

Abstract

Bridging brain activity and technology, the proposed research examines people’s creative expressions through building an installation in a 3D augmented reality environment. It is strongly motivated to offer a nuanced understanding of the relationship between brain activities and creative expressions. Through broadening people’s perceptual experiences and even creating new experiential dimensions that are previously unexplored, the new virtual technology would substantially benefit brain functioning. By being “present” and “immersive” in a virtual environment, to express creativity, our assumption was that a wide network of brain regions would be mobilized in healthy participants. Wearing a Hololens (HMD) and a mobita 32-channel wireless EEG, 14 participants aged 25 years old in average have been invited to perform three conditions, all randomised, using common and uncommon objects: (a) imagine building an installation in the real environment (b) imagine building an installation in augmented reality, and (c) execute an installation in augmented reality. All participants were given 2.30 minutes to perform the task as instructed for both objects. Preliminary EEG data revealed similar alpha, beta and theta brain activities between common and uncommon objects within each condition in left and right parietal and frontal lobes. Moreover, alpha, beta and theta activities were similar in right and left parietal and frontal lobes when participants were invited to imagine creating an installation in real and virtual environments, but they were significantly higher in left that in right parietal and frontal lobes when an installation was virtually executed. In this light, our findings would be consistent with the idea that different styles of creativity underline some common neurobiological processes. By charting the neural basis of creativity in the virtual reality, it would become possible to understand why some people are more creative than others and eventually to understand how to make people more creative