The Science of Creativity & How to Enhance Creative Innovation

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing creativity. Creativity is a topic that to many people is very abstract. That is, we know when something seems creative, some of us know people who are creative or perhaps are creative, and yet the ability to be creative resides in everybody. And we know that because the neural circuits that underlie creativity have been somewhat defined and the steps and processes within the brain and body that lead to creativity are well known. That said, most people don't know how to access creativity. And if they do know how to access creativity, they are only able to access creativity in a fairly limited number of domains of life. For instance, in the visual arts or in music or within science or engineering or any number of different domains ranging from the kitchen to sport to childhood interactions, that is childhood games. In other words, some adults are able to access their creative spirit when engaging in childlike play with children or for that matter with adults. But as it turns out, all of creativity stems from just a small subset of neural structures in the brain that need to be activated in a particular sequence or order. Today, we will talk about what those neural structures are, what particular order they need to be activated in, in order to come up with, for instance, new ideas that are creative, and then how to implement those creative strategies. We will also talk about different ways to access creativity that include narrative and storytelling, as well as applying new rule sets or even entirely new world views. And we will do this in a structured way that will allow anyone, whether or not you consider yourself creative or not, to be able to apply these tools in different domains of life, work, family, play, and on and on. By the end of today's episode, you will have a better understanding of what creativity is and how to access it. And if you like to bring others into your creative endeavors, which as you'll soon learn, can massively expand the extent to which you yourself can express your creative talents. As is the case with all episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast, today we will discuss both scientific mechanisms and nomenclature. And I promise to make all of that clear to you, even if you don't have a background in biology or psychology. But we will also of course discuss tools, that is specific steps that you can take in order to be more creative. One particular tool that I'm excited to share with you involves a meditation, but this is a very unusual meditation. This is not sitting with eyes closed, focusing on your breath, or focusing on a chime or some other feature in your sensory environment or even in your body. Later, we will talk about open monitoring meditations. Open monitoring meditations are very distinct from other forms of meditation and involve learning how to sit back and simply observe your thoughts while intentionally varying where your thoughts go. So for those of you that find it a struggle to focus or to refocus in more traditional forms of meditation, or maybe even in your work, and even for those of you that may suffer from things like ADHD or similar, open monitoring meditation can be an extremely valuable tool for accessing your creative abilities because of the ways that it allows you to tap into specific circuits within the frontal networks of your brain. So these are networks of the brain that include the areas just behind your forehead and that allow you to evaluate new and novel rule sets in a very unconstrained way. Because if you think about it, creativity is really the ability to take existing elements from the physical world or from the thought world, if you will, or from any domain of life, mood, thinking and information, and to reorder those into novel combinations that are useful for something. And as we'll also find out later, creativity has this incredible aspect to it, which is that when we see or create or experience something that is truly creative, it reveals to us something fundamental about the way that the natural world and indeed the way that our brains work. If that sounds very mysterious and abstract to you now, I promise that by the end of today's episode, you will not only understand what that means, but you will also understand how to use open monitoring meditations as well as other forms of tools in order to access your creative ability. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality. The company was founded by two all-American swimmers from Stanford and everything about ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses were designed with performance in mind. I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of challenges for you to be able to see clearly. For instance, when you move from a shady area to a sunny area, there are all sorts of adaptations that have to occur in your eye and brain. ROKA understands these kinds of adaptations and the other ones required to see clearly. And those are built into the engineering of their sunglasses and eyeglasses. One of the things that makes ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses so terrific is that they are extremely lightweight. In fact, most of the time I don't even realize that they're on my face. I wear sunglasses when I drive and whenever I need to throughout the day and I wear readers at night. I do not wear sunglasses when I get my morning sunlight, which I do every single morning, as you should be doing also, as is covered many times on this podcast. ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses are also unique in that unlike a lot of so-called performance eyeglasses out there, they don't make you look like a cyborg. They have some of the styles that make you look like a cyborg, if that's your thing. But if you want to wear glasses or sunglasses out to dinner or around for social reasons, they have many different aesthetic styles to choose from. If you'd like to try ROKA eyeglasses or sunglasses, go to roka.com, that's roka.com, and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your order. Again, that's ROKA, roka.com, and enter the code Huberman at checkout. Today's episode is also brought to us by thesis. thesis makes custom nootropics. And as you may have heard me say before, I am not a fan of the word nootropics because it means smart drugs. And frankly, there is no neural circuit in the brain for being quote unquote smart. There are neural circuits for focus. There are neural circuits for task switching. There are neural circuits for today's topic, which is creativity. Nootropics therefore is not a great word to describe any sort of supplement or drug that can enhance brain function because it lacks specificity. thesis understands this and therefore has designed custom nootropics that are tailored to your specific needs and that allow you to enter the brain and bodily states that are optimal for things like focus, energy, creativity, and so on. If you'd like to try your own personalized nootropic starter kit, go online to takethesis.com/huberman.