Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Perspective
  • Published:

The role of memory in creative ideation

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 2, pages 246–257 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Creativity reflects the remarkable human capacity to produce novel and effective ideas. Empirical work suggests that creative ideas do not just emerge out of nowhere but typically result from goal-directed memory processes. Specifically, creative ideation is supported by controlled retrieval, involves semantic and episodic memory, builds on processes used in memory construction and differentially recruits memory at different stages in the creative process. In this Perspective, we propose a memory in creative ideation (MemiC) framework that describes how creative ideas arise across four distinguishable stages of memory search, candidate idea construction, novelty evaluation and effectiveness evaluation. We discuss evidence supporting the contribution of semantic and episodic memory to each stage of creative ideation. The MemiC framework overcomes the shortcomings of previous creativity theories by accounting for the controlled, dynamic involvement of different memory systems across separable ideation stages and offers a clear agenda for future creativity research.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Creative ideation involves associative processes and controlled processes acting on semantic and episodic memory.
Fig. 2: The MemiC framework.
Fig. 3: Memory processes across the stages of creative ideation.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Hennessey, B. A. & Amabile, T. M. Creativity. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 61, 569–598 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Frey, C. B. & Osborne, M. A. The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation? Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 114, 254–280 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Schacter, D. L. et al. The future of memory: remembering, imagining, and the brain. Neuron 76, 677–694 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Abraham, A. & Bubic, A. Semantic memory as the root of imagination. Front. Psychol. 6, 325 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  5. Runco, M. A. Divergent Thinking (Praeger, 1991).

  6. Guilford, J. P. The Nature of Human Intelligence (McGraw-Hill, 1967).

  7. Reiter-Palmon, R., Forthmann, B. & Barbot, B. Scoring divergent thinking tests: a review and systematic framework. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 13, 144–152 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Said-Metwaly, S., Taylor, C. L., Camarda, A. & Barbot, B. Divergent thinking and creative achievement — how strong is the link? An updated meta-analysis. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000507 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Benedek, M., Jauk, E., Sommer, M., Arendasy, M. & Neubauer, A. C. Intelligence, creativity, and cognitive control: the common and differential involvement of executive functions in intelligence and creativity. Intelligence 46, 73–83 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  10. Benedek, M., Christensen, A. P., Fink, A. & Beaty, R. E. Creativity assessment in neuroscience research. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 13, 218–226 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Forgeard, M. J. C. & Kaufman, J. C. Who cares about imagination, creativity, and innovation, and why? A review. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 10, 250–269 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Runco, M. A. & Jaeger, G. J. The standard definition of creativity. Creat. Res. J. 24, 92–96 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Schacter, D. L., Addis, D. R. & Buckner, R. L. Remembering the past to imagine the future: the prospective brain. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 8, 657–661 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Ward, T. B. Structured imagination: the role of category structure in exemplar generation. Cognit. Psychol. 27, 1–40 (1994).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Weisberg, R. W. Creativity: Genius and Other Myths (W. H. Freeman/Times Books/Henry Holt, 1986).

  16. Raaijmakers, J. G. & Shiffrin, R. M. Search of associative memory. Psychol. Rev. 88, 93–134 (1981).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. George, T. & Wiley, J. Fixation, flexibility, and forgetting during alternate uses tasks. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 13, 305–313 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Smith, S. M., Ward, T. B. & Schumacher, J. S. Constraining effects of examples in a creative generation task. Mem. Cognit. 21, 837–845 (1993).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  19. Smith, S. M. & Blankenship, S. E. Incubation and the persistence of fixation in problem solving. Am. J. Psychol. 104, 61 (1991).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. Gerver, C. R., Griffin, J. W., Dennis, N. A. & Beaty, R. Memory and creativity: a meta-analytic examination of the relationship between memory systems and creative cognition. Preprint at PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ag5q9 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Mildner, J. N. & Tamir, D. I. Spontaneous thought as an unconstrained memory process. Trends Neurosci. 42, 763–777 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  22. Miroshnik, K. G., Forthmann, B., Karwowski, M. & Benedek, M. The relationship of divergent thinking with broad retrieval ability and processing speed: a meta-analysis. Preprint at PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/jfmda (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Kenett, Y. N. & Faust, M. A semantic network cartography of the creative mind. Trends Cogn. Sci. 23, 271–274 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Kenett, Y. N. et al. Flexibility of thought in high creative individuals represented by percolation analysis. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 867–872 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  25. Beaty, R. E. et al. Robust prediction of individual creative ability from brain functional connectivity. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 1087–1092 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  26. Ovando-Tellez, M. et al. Brain connectivity-based prediction of real-life creativity is mediated by semantic memory structure. Sci. Adv. 8, eabl4294 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  27. Benedek, M. & Fink, A. Toward a neurocognitive framework of creative cognition: the role of memory, attention, and cognitive control. Curr. Opin. Behav. Sci. 27, 116–122 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Sternberg, R. J. & Lubart, T. I. Investing in creativity. Am. Psychol. 51, 677–688 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Weisberg, R. W. Rethinking Creativity: Inside-the-Box Thinking as the Basis for Innovation (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020).

  30. Simonton, D. K. Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity (Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).

  31. Guilford, J. P. Creativity. Am. Psychol. 5, 444–454 (1950).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  32. Campbell, D. T. Blind variation and selective retentions in creative thought as in other knowledge processes. Psychol. Rev. 67, 380–400 (1960).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  33. Poincaré, H. Science and Method (T. Nelson, 1914).

  34. Weisberg, R. W. in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (eds Williams, A. M., Kozbelt, A., Ericsson, K. A. & Hoffman, R. R.) 812–834 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018).

  35. Mednick, S. The associative basis of the creative process. Psychol. Rev. 69, 220–232 (1962).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  36. Ward, T. B. & Wickes, K. N. S. Stable and dynamic properties of category structure guide imaginative thought. Creat. Res. J. 21, 15–23 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Ward, T. B. The role of domain knowledge in creative generation. Learn. Individ. Differ. 18, 363–366 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Benedek, M. & Jauk, E. in The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (eds Kaufman, J. & Sternberg, R.) 200–223 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2019).

  39. Silvia, P. J. Intelligence and creativity are pretty similar after all. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 27, 599–606 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Zabelina, D. L., Friedman, N. P. & Andrews-Hanna, J. Unity and diversity of executive functions in creativity. Conscious. Cogn. 68, 47–56 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  41. Frith, E. et al. Intelligence and creativity share a common cognitive and neural basis. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 150, 609–632 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  42. Gerwig, A. et al. The relationship between intelligence and divergent thinking: a meta-analytic update. J. Intell. 9, 23 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  43. Benedek, M., Könen, T. & Neubauer, A. C. Associative abilities underlying creativity. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 6, 273–281 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Forthmann, B. et al. Creative ideation, broad retrieval ability, and processing speed: a confirmatory study of nested cognitive abilities. Intelligence 75, 59–72 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Silvia, P. J., Beaty, R. E. & Nusbaum, E. C. Verbal fluency and creativity: general and specific contributions of broad retrieval ability (Gr) factors to divergent thinking. Intelligence 41, 328–340 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Beaty, R. E., Christensen, A. P., Benedek, M., Silvia, P. J. & Schacter, D. L. Creative constraints: brain activity and network dynamics underlying semantic interference during idea production. Neuroimage 148, 189–196 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  47. Gilhooly, K. J., Fioratou, E., Anthony, S. H. & Wynn, V. Divergent thinking: strategies and executive involvement in generating novel uses for familiar objects. Br. J. Psychol. 98, 611–625 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  48. Nusbaum, E. C. & Silvia, P. J. Are intelligence and creativity really so different? Fluid intelligence, executive processes, and strategy use in divergent thinking. Intelligence 39, 36–45 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Beaty, R. E., Silvia, P. J., Nusbaum, E. C., Jauk, E. & Benedek, M. The roles of associative and executive processes in creative cognition. Mem. Cognit. 42, 1186–1197 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  50. Benedek, M. & Jauk, E. in The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought (eds. Fox, K. C. R. & Christoff, K.) 285–298 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2018).

  51. Chrysikou, E. G. in The Cambridge Handbook of the Neuroscience of Creativity (eds Jung, R. E. & Vartanian, O.) 299–317 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018).

  52. Sowden, P. T., Pringle, A. & Gabora, L. The shifting sands of creative thinking: connections to dual-process theory. Think. Reason. 21, 40–60 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Volle, E. in The Cambridge Handbook of the Neuroscience of Creativity (eds Jung, R. E. & Vartanian, O.) 333–360 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018).

  54. Simonton, D. K. Creativity and discovery as blind variation: Campbell’s (1960) BVSR model after the half-century mark. Rev. Gen. Psychol. 15, 158–174 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. Mumford, M. D., Medeiros, K. E. & Partlow, P. J. Creative thinking: processes, strategies, and knowledge. J. Creat. Behav. 46, 30–47 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Abraham, A. The imaginative mind. Hum. Brain Mapp. 37, 4197–4211 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  57. Addis, D. R., Pan, L., Musicaro, R. & Schacter, D. L. Divergent thinking and constructing episodic simulations. Memory 24, 89–97 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  58. Madore, K. P., Addis, D. R. & Schacter, D. L. Creativity and memory: effects of an episodic-specificity induction on divergent thinking. Psychol. Sci. 26, 1461–1468 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  59. Beaty, R. E., Benedek, M., Silvia, P. J. & Schacter, D. L. Creative cognition and brain network dynamics. Trends Cogn. Sci. 20, 87–95 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  60. Beaty, R. E., Thakral, P. P., Madore, K. P., Benedek, M. & Schacter, D. L. Core network contributions to remembering the past, imagining the future, and thinking creatively. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 30, 1939–1951 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  61. Meyer, M. L., Hershfield, H. E., Waytz, A. G., Mildner, J. N. & Tamir, D. I. Creative expertise is associated with transcending the here and now. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 116, 483–494 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  62. Thakral, P. P., Madore, K. P., Kalinowski, S. E. & Schacter, D. L. Modulation of hippocampal brain networks produces changes in episodic simulation and divergent thinking. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117, 12729–12740 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  63. Schacter, D. L., Norman, K. A. & Koutstaal, W. The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 49, 289–318 (1998).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  64. Hardt, O., Einarsson, E. Ö. & Nader, K. A bridge over troubled water: reconsolidation as a link between cognitive and neuroscientific memory research traditions. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 61, 141–167 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  65. Yee, E. & Thompson-Schill, S. L. Putting concepts into context. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 23, 1015–1027 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  66. Kumar, A. A. Semantic memory: a review of methods, models, and current challenges. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 28, 40–80 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  67. Durso, F. T., Rea, C. B. & Dayton, T. Graph-theoretic confirmation of restructuring during insight. Psychol. Sci. 5, 94–98 (1994).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Schilling, M. A. A ‘small-world’ network model of cognitive insight. Creat. Res. J. 17, 131–154 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  69. Schacter, D. L. & Addis, D. R. The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: remembering the past and imagining the future. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 362, 773–786 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  70. Hassabis, D. & Maguire, E. A. Deconstructing episodic memory with construction. Trends Cogn. Sci. 11, 299–306 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  71. Beaty, R. E. & Schacter, D. L. in The Cambridge Handbook of the Neuroscience of Creativity (eds Jung, R. E. & Vartanian, O.) 249–260 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018).

  72. Christoff, K., Irving, Z. C., Fox, K. C. R., Spreng, R. N. & Andrews-Hanna, J. R. Mind-wandering as spontaneous thought: a dynamic framework. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 17, 718–731 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  73. Gabora, L. & Ranjan, A. in Neuroscience of Creativity (eds. Vartanian, O., Bristol, A. S. & Kaufman, J. C.) 19–43 (MIT Press, 2013).

  74. Thakral, P. P., Devitt, A. L., Brashier, N. M. & Schacter, D. L. Linking creativity and false memory: common consequences of a flexible memory system. Cognition 217, 104905 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  75. Storm, B. C. & Patel, T. N. Forgetting as a consequence and enabler of creative thinking. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 40, 1594–1609 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  76. Beda, Z. & Smith, S. M. Chasing red herrings: memory of distractors causes fixation in creative problem solving. Mem. Cognit. 46, 671–684 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  77. Smith, S. M. & Tindell, D. R. Memory blocks in word fragment completion caused by involuntary retrieval of orthographically related primes. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 23, 355–370 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  78. Smith, S. M. & Beda, Z. Old problems in new contexts: the context-dependent fixation hypothesis. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 149, 192–197 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  79. Choi, H. & Smith, S. M. Incubation and the resolution of tip-of-the-tongue states. J. Gen. Psychol. 132, 365–376 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  80. Barbot, B. The dynamics of creative ideation: introducing a new assessment paradigm. Front. Psychol. 9, 2529 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  81. Beaty, R. E. & Silvia, P. J. Why do ideas get more creative across time? An executive interpretation of the serial order effect in divergent thinking tasks. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 6, 309–319 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  82. Pringle, A. & Sowden, P. T. Unearthing the creative thinking process: fresh insights from a think-aloud study of garden design. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 11, 344–358 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  83. Finke, R. A. Imagery, creativity, and emergent structure. Conscious. Cogn. 5, 381–393 (1996).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  84. Kleinmintz, O. M., Ivancovsky, T. & Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. The two-fold model of creativity: the neural underpinnings of the generation and evaluation of creative ideas. Curr. Opin. Behav. Sci. 27, 131–138 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  85. Benedek, M. in Exploring Transdisciplinarity in Art and Sciences (eds Kapoula, Z., Volle, E., Renoult, J. & Andreatta, M.) 31–48 (Springer, 2018).

  86. Finke, R. A., Ward, T. B. & Smith, S. M. Creative Cognition: Theory, Research, and Applications (A Bradford Book, MIT Press, 1996).

  87. Diedrich, J., Benedek, M., Jauk, E. & Neubauer, A. C. Are creative ideas novel and useful? Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 9, 35–40 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  88. Kröger, S. et al. Using a shoe as a plant pot: neural correlates of passive conceptual expansion. Brain Res. 1430, 52–61 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  89. Ren, J. et al. The function of the hippocampus and middle temporal gyrus in forming new associations and concepts during the processing of novelty and usefulness features in creative designs. Neuroimage 214, 116751 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  90. Goodman, C. A tale of two twists. Nature 511, 12–13 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  91. Seifert, C. M., Meyer, D. E., Davidson, N., Patalano, A. L. & Yaniv, I. in The Nature of Insight (eds Sternberg, R. & Davidson, J.) 65–124 (MIT Press, 1994).

  92. Holyoak, K. J. & Thagard, P. Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought (MIT Press, 1996).

  93. Ovando-Tellez, M. et al. An investigation of the cognitive and neural correlates of semantic memory search related to creative ability. Commun. Biol. 5, 1–16 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  94. Hart, Y. et al. Creative foraging: an experimental paradigm for studying exploration and discovery. PLoS ONE 12, e0182133 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  95. Rocke, A. J. It began with a daydream: the 150th anniversary of the Kekulé benzene structure. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 54, 46–50 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  96. Rothenberg, A. The Janusian process in scientific creativity. Creat. Res. J. 9, 207–231 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  97. Hart, Y. et al. Creative exploration as a scale-invariant search on a meaning landscape. Nat. Commun. 9, 5411 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  98. Boden, M. A. The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (Psychology Press, 2004).

  99. Smith, K. A., Huber, D. E. & Vul, E. Multiply-constrained semantic search in the remote associates test. Cognition 128, 64–75 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  100. Andrews-Hanna, J. R. & Grilli, M. D. Mapping the imaginative mind: charting new paths forward. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 30, 82–89 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  101. Guo, Y. et al. Divergent thinking and evaluative skill: a meta-analysis. J. Creat. Behav. 56, 432–448 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  102. Plucker, J. A., Makel, M. C. & Qian, M. in The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (eds Kaufman, J. C. & Sternberg, R. J.) 44–68 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2019).

  103. Matheson, H. E. & Kenett, Y. N. A novel coding scheme for assessing responses in divergent thinking: an embodied approach. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 15, 412–425 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  104. Olteţeanu, A.-M. & Falomir, Z. Object replacement and object composition in a creative cognitive system. towards a computational solver of the alternative uses test. Cogn. Syst. Res. 39, 15–32 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  105. Acar, S., Runco, M. A. & Park, H. What should people be told when they take a divergent thinking test? A meta-analytic review of explicit instructions for divergent thinking. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 14, 39–49 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  106. Weiss, S., Wilhelm, O. & Kyllonen, P. An improved taxonomy of creativity measures based on salient task attributes. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000434 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  107. Perchtold-Stefan, C. M., Papousek, I., Rominger, C. & Fink, A. Creativity in an affective context. Reappraisal inventiveness and malevolent creativity as extensions of creativity research toward more real-world creative behavior. Eur. Psychol. 27, 216–226 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  108. Dumas, D., Schmidt, L. C. & Alexander, P. A. Predicting creative problem solving in engineering design. Think. Skills Creat. 21, 50–66 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  109. Schoevers, E. M., Kroesbergen, E. H. & Kattou, M. Mathematical creativity: a combination of domain-general creative and domain-specific mathematical skills. J. Creat. Behav. 54, 242–252 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  110. Carroll, J. B. Human Cognitive Abilities: A Survey of Factor-Analytic Studies (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993).

  111. Dygert, S. K. C. & Jarosz, A. F. Individual differences in creative cognition. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 149, 1249–1274 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  112. Benedek, M. et al. How semantic memory structure and intelligence contribute to creative thought: a network science approach. Think. Reason. 23, 158–183 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  113. Avitia, M. J. & Kaufman, J. C. Beyond g and c: the relationship of rated creativity to long-term storage and retrieval (Glr). Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 8, 293–302 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  114. Beaty, R. E. & Silvia, P. J. Metaphorically speaking: cognitive abilities and the production of figurative language. Mem. Cognit. 41, 255–267 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  115. Kenett, Y. N. in The Cambridge Handbook of the Neuroscience of Creativity (eds Jung, R. E. & Vartanian, O) 233–248 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018).

  116. Prabhakaran, R., Green, A. E. & Gray, J. R. Thin slices of creativity: using single-word utterances to assess creative cognition. Behav. Res. Methods 46, 641–659 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  117. Olson, J. A., Nahas, J., Chmoulevitch, D., Cropper, S. J. & Webb, M. E. Naming unrelated words predicts creativity. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci.USA 118, e2022340118 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  118. Beaty, R. E., Zeitlen, D. C., Baker, B. S. & Kenett, Y. N. Forward flow and creative thought: assessing associative cognition and its role in divergent thinking. Think. Skills Creat. 41, 100859 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  119. Gray, K. et al. “Forward flow”: a new measure to quantify free thought and predict creativity. Am. Psychol. 74, 539–554 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  120. Mastria, S. et al. Clustering and switching in divergent thinking: neurophysiological correlates underlying flexibility during idea generation. Neuropsychologia 158, 107890 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  121. Hass, R. W. Semantic search during divergent thinking. Cognition 166, 344–357 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  122. Thakral, P. P., Yang, A. C., Addis, D. R. & Schacter, D. L. Divergent thinking and constructing future events: dissociating old from new ideas. Memory 29, 729–743 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  123. Madore, K. P., Jing, H. G. & Schacter, D. L. Divergent creative thinking in young and older adults: extending the effects of an episodic specificity induction. Mem. Cognit. 44, 974–988 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  124. Madore, K. P., Thakral, P. P., Beaty, R. E., Addis, D. R. & Schacter, D. L. Neural mechanisms of episodic retrieval support divergent creative thinking. Cereb. Cortex 29, 150–166 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  125. van Genugten, R. D. I., Beaty, R. E., Madore, K. P. & Schacter, D. L. Does episodic retrieval contribute to creative writing? An exploratory study. Creat. Res. J. 34, 145–158 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  126. Smallwood, J. et al. The default mode network in cognition: a topographical perspective. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 22, 503–513 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  127. Shofty, B. et al. The default network is causally linked to creative thinking. Mol. Psychiatry 27, 1848–1854 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  128. Unsworth, N. Examining the dynamics of strategic search from long-term memory. J. Mem. Lang. 93, 135–153 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  129. Benedek, M., Jurisch, J., Koschutnig, K., Fink, A. & Beaty, R. E. Elements of creative thought: investigating the cognitive and neural correlates of association and bi-association processes. Neuroimage 210, 116586 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  130. Kounios, J. & Beeman, M. The cognitive neuroscience of insight. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 65, 71–93 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  131. Bernard, M., Kenett, Y. N., Ovando-Tellez, M., Benedek, M. & Volle, E. in Proc. 41st Annual Conf. Cognitive Sci. Soc. (eds Goel, A. K., Seifert, C. M. & Freska, C.) 138–144 (Cognitive Science Society, 2019).

  132. Rossmann, E. & Fink, A. Do creative people use shorter associative pathways? Personal. Individ. Differ. 49, 891–895 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  133. Bieth, T. et al. Dynamic changes in semantic memory structure support successful problem-solving. Preprint at PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/38b4w (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  134. Benoit, R. G. & Schacter, D. L. Specifying the core network supporting episodic simulation and episodic memory by activation likelihood estimation. Neuropsychologia 75, 450–457 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  135. Beaty, R. E., Benedek, M., Barry Kaufman, S. & Silvia, P. J. Default and executive network coupling supports creative idea production. Sci. Rep. 5, 10964 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  136. Tompary, A. & Thompson-Schill, S. L. Semantic influences on episodic memory distortions. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 150, 1800–1824 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  137. Bendetowicz, D., Urbanski, M., Aichelburg, C., Levy, R. & Volle, E. Brain morphometry predicts individual creative potential and the ability to combine remote ideas. Cortex 86, 216–229 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  138. Bendetowicz, D. et al. Two critical brain networks for generation and combination of remote associations. Brain 141, 217–233 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  139. Yonelinas, A. P. The nature of recollection and familiarity: a review of 30 years of research. J. Mem. Lang. 46, 441–517 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  140. Benedek, M. et al. To create or to recall original ideas: brain processes associated with the imagination of novel object uses. Cortex 99, 93–102 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  141. Silvia, P. J., Nusbaum, E. C. & Beaty, R. E. Old or new? Evaluating the old/new scoring method for divergent thinking tasks. J. Creat. Behav. 51, 216–224 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  142. Grohman, M., Wodniecka, Z. & KłUsak, M. Divergent thinking and evaluation skills: do they always go together? J. Creat. Behav. 40, 125–145 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  143. Silvia, P. J. Discernment and creativity: how well can people identify their most creative ideas? Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 2, 139–146 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  144. Beaty, R. E. & Johnson, D. R. Automating creativity assessment with SemDis: an open platform for computing semantic distance. Behav. Res. Methods 53, 757–780 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  145. Johnson, D. R. et al. Divergent semantic integration (DSI): extracting creativity from narratives with distributional semantic modeling. Behav. Res. Methods https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-01986-2 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  146. Benedek, M. et al. Assessment of creativity evaluation skills: a psychometric investigation in prospective teachers. Think. Skills Creat. 21, 75–84 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  147. Ceh, S. M., Edelmann, C., Hofer, G. & Benedek, M. Assessing raters: what factors predict discernment in novice creativity raters? J. Creat. Behav. 46, 41–54 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  148. Kleinmintz, O. M., Goldstein, P., Mayseless, N., Abecasis, D. & Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. Expertise in musical improvisation and creativity: the mediation of idea evaluation. PLoS ONE 9, e101568 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  149. Puryear, J. S., Kettler, T. & Rinn, A. N. Relationships of personality to differential conceptions of creativity: a systematic review. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 11, 59–68 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  150. Christensen, A. P., Kenett, Y. N., Cotter, K. N., Beaty, R. E. & Silvia, P. J. Remotely close associations: openness to experience and semantic memory structure. Eur. J. Personal. 32, 480–492 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  151. Beaty, R. E. et al. Personality and complex brain networks: the role of openness to experience in default network efficiency. Hum. Brain Mapp. 37, 773–779 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  152. Vartanian, O. et al. Structural correlates of openness and intellect: implications for the contribution of personality to creativity. Hum. Brain Mapp. 39, 2987–2996 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  153. Barbeau, E. J., Chauvel, P., Moulin, C. J. A., Regis, J. & Liégeois-Chauvel, C. Hippocampus duality: memory and novelty detection are subserved by distinct mechanisms. Hippocampus 27, 405–416 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  154. Habib, R., McIntosh, A. R., Wheeler, M. A. & Tulving, E. Memory encoding and hippocampally-based novelty/familiarity discrimination networks. Neuropsychologia 41, 271–279 (2003).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  155. Lopez-Persem, A. et al. Four core properties of the human brain valuation system demonstrated in intracranial signals. Nat. Neurosci. 23, 664–675 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  156. Rangel, A., Camerer, C. & Montague, P. R. A framework for studying the neurobiology of value-based decision making. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 9, 545–556 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  157. Ellamil, M., Dobson, C., Beeman, M. & Christoff, K. Evaluative and generative modes of thought during the creative process. Neuroimage 59, 1783–1794 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  158. Subramaniam, K., Faust, M., Beeman, M. & Mashal, N. The repetition paradigm: enhancement of novel metaphors and suppression of conventional metaphors in the left inferior parietal lobe. Neuropsychologia 50, 2705–2719 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  159. Binder, J. R. & Desai, R. H. The neurobiology of semantic memory. Trends Cogn. Sci. 15, 527–536 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  160. Benedek, M. et al. To create or to recall? Neural mechanisms underlying the generation of creative new ideas. Neuroimage 88, 125–133 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  161. Corning, P. A. in Understanding Complexity (eds Ragsdell, G. & Wilby, J.) 277–282 (Springer, 2001).

  162. Mueller, J. S., Melwani, S. & Goncalo, J. A. The bias against creativity: why people desire but reject creative ideas. Psychol. Sci. 23, 13–17 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  163. Rietzschel, E. F., Nijstad, B. A. & Stroebe, W. The selection of creative ideas after individual idea generation: choosing between creativity and impact. Br. J. Psychol. 101, 47–68 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  164. Zajonc, R. B. Mere exposure: a gateway to the subliminal. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 10, 224–228 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  165. Nielsen, J. H., Escalas, J. E. & Hoeffler, S. Mental simulation and category knowledge affect really new product evaluation through transportation. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 24, 145–158 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  166. Huang, F., Fan, J. & Luo, J. The neural basis of novelty and appropriateness in processing of creative chunk decomposition. Neuroimage 113, 122–132 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  167. Huang, F., Tang, S., Sun, P. & Luo, J. Neural correlates of novelty and appropriateness processing in externally induced constraint relaxation. Neuroimage 172, 381–389 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  168. Christensen, B. T. & Schunn, C. D. The role and impact of mental simulation in design. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 23, 327–344 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  169. Ren, J. et al. Functional lateralization of the medial temporal lobe in novel associative processing during creativity evaluation. Cereb. Cortex 33, 1186–1206 (2023).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  170. Eysenck, H. J. Genius: The Natural History of Creativity (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995).

  171. Nusbaum, E. C., Silvia, P. J. & Beaty, R. E. Ready, set, create: what instructing people to “be creative” reveals about the meaning and mechanisms of divergent thinking. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 8, 423–432 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  172. Osborn, A. F. Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking (Scribner, 1957).

  173. Sio, U. N. & Ormerod, T. C. Does incubation enhance problem solving? A meta-analytic review. Psychol. Bull. 135, 94–120 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  174. Weinberger, A. B., Green, A. E. & Chrysikou, E. G. Using transcranial direct current stimulation to enhance creative cognition: interactions between task, polarity, and stimulation site. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 11, 246 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  175. Luft, C. D. B., Zioga, I., Thompson, N. M., Banissy, M. J. & Bhattacharya, J. Right temporal alpha oscillations as a neural mechanism for inhibiting obvious associations. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, E12144–E12152 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  176. Ramey, M. M. & Zabelina, D. Creative people use memory differently: divergent thinking modulates how episodic memory is combined with semantic knowledge. Preprint at PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fgkwq (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  177. Krieger-Redwood, K. et al. Creativity in verbal associations is linked to semantic control. Cereb. Cortex https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac405 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  178. Vieira, S., Benedek, M., Gero, J., Li, S. & Cascini, G. Design spaces and EEG frequency band power in constrained and open design. Int. J. Des. Creat. Innov. 10, 193–221 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  179. Gero, J. & Mahrer, M. L. (eds) Modeling Creativity and Knowledge-Based Creative Design (Psychology Press, 2013).

  180. Denervaud, S., Christensen, A. P., Kenett, Y. N. & Beaty, R. E. Education shapes the structure of semantic memory and impacts creative thinking. Npj Sci. Learn. 6, 1–7 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  181. Yang, W. et al. Creative problem solving in knowledge-rich contexts. Trends Cogn. Sci. 26, 849–859 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  182. Irish, M., Addis, D. R., Hodges, J. R. & Piguet, O. Considering the role of semantic memory in episodic future thinking: evidence from semantic dementia. Brain 135, 2178–2191 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  183. Wiley, J. Expertise as mental set: the effects of domain knowledge in creative problem solving. Mem. Cognit. 26, 716–730 (1998).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  184. Bilalic, M., McLeod, P. & Gobet, F. Inflexibility of experts — reality or myth? Quantifying the Einstellung effect in chess masters. Cognit. Psychol. 56, 73–102 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  185. Flavell, J. H. Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: a new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. Am. Psychol. 34, 906–911 (1979).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  186. Lebuda, I. & Benedek, M. A systematic framework of creative metacognition. Preprint at PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/s793q (2023).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  187. Plucker, J. A., Beghetto, R. A. & Dow, G. T. Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educ. Psychol. 39, 83–96 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  188. Gajda, A., Karwowski, M. & Beghetto, R. A. Creativity and academic achievement: a meta-analysis. J. Educ. Psychol. 109, 269–299 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  189. Kim, K. H. Meta-analyses of the relationship of creative achievement to both IQ and divergent thinking test scores. J. Creat. Behav. 42, 106–130 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  190. Scott, G., Leritz, L. E. & Mumford, M. D. The effectiveness of creativity training: a quantitative review. Creat. Res. J. 16, 361–388 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  191. Kenett, Y. N., Anaki, D. & Faust, M. Investigating the structure of semantic networks in low and high creative persons. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8, 407 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  192. He, L. et al. The relation between semantic memory structure, associative abilities, and verbal and figural creativity. Think. Reason. 27, 268–293 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  193. Conway, M. A. & Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychol. Rev. 107, 261–288 (2000).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  194. Tulving, E. Episodic memory: from mind to brain. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 53, 1–25 (2002).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  195. Patterson, K., Nestor, P. J. & Rogers, T. T. Where do you know what you know? The representation of semantic knowledge in the human brain. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 8, 976–987 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  196. Ranganath, C. & Ritchey, M. Two cortical systems for memory-guided behaviour. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 13, 713–726 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  197. Huntenburg, J. M., Bazin, P.-L. & Margulies, D. S. Large-scale gradients in human cortical organization. Trends Cogn. Sci. 22, 21–31 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  198. Margulies, D. S. et al. Situating the default-mode network along a principal gradient of macroscale cortical organization. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 12574–12579 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  199. Irish, M. & Vatansever, D. Rethinking the episodic–semantic distinction from a gradient perspective. Curr. Opin. Behav. Sci. 32, 43–49 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  200. Vatansever, D., Smallwood, J. & Jefferies, E. Varying demands for cognitive control reveals shared neural processes supporting semantic and episodic memory retrieval. Nat. Commun. 12, 2134 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors thank The University of Graz for supporting this work by granting a COLIBRI fellowship to Y.N.K.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Mathias Benedek

  2. Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Roger E. Beaty

  3. Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Daniel L. Schacter

  4. Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Daniel L. Schacter

  5. Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences, Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Yoed N. Kenett

Authors
  1. Mathias Benedek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Roger E. Beaty
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Daniel L. Schacter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Yoed N. Kenett
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

M.B., R.E.B and Y.N.K wrote the article. All authors contributed substantially to discussion of the content and reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mathias Benedek.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Reviews Psychology thanks Steve Smith, Robert Weisberg, Oded Kleinmintz and Rex Jung for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Benedek, M., Beaty, R.E., Schacter, D.L. et al. The role of memory in creative ideation. Nat Rev Psychol 2, 246–257 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00158-z

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00158-z

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing