Dr Paul Howard-Jones investigates the link between brain function and teaching creativity.
He uses Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to carry out an experiment investigating a strategy that is commonly used in the classroom to foster creativity.
The strategy asks students to incorporate random stimuli into the work they are producing. The stimulus could be a piece of art, a poem or a play that is unrelated to the task in hand.
The scans show there is a substantial increase in creative brain activity using this strategy, and the results also imply a link between time and a quality creative outcome.
