Recognizing motives: The dissensual self

This article proposes to approach issues around the self and its derivate concepts such as motivation through a methodology of rearticulation. For this, we build on the idea developed in the (broadly) Vygotskian tradition of the self as mediated by cultural artifacts in activity, viewed as a transformative social process that reconfigures sense and meaning. We aim at suggesting these potentials by rearticulating activities in which people display (represent, avow, reflect, expose, externalize, etc.) their motives. Most contemporary ‘motivational technologies’ stage a pragmatic self-calculation. For some, these technologies confirm a common-sense, managerial self; others read them as a ‘poetics of practice’ that performs and produces new motives and selves in a liminal space of discursive creativity. These two readings are superseded as we – with art theory from Vygotsky through Brecht to Groys, Bourriaud and Rancière – consider drug counsellors’ experiments with aesthetic practices of self-display in which sense is reconfigured as dis-sensus, as meaning deferred. Aesthetics provide a lense through which we can appreciate how an artifact-mediation can be also a struggle for recognition that reconstitutes emerging selves, senses, and motives

Applying the neuroscience of creativity to creativity training

This article investigates how neuroscience in general, and neuroscience of creativity in particular, can be used in teaching "applied creativity" and the usefulness of this approach to creativity training. The article is based on empirical data and our experiences from the Applied NeuroCreativity (ANC) program, taught at business schools in Denmark and Canada. In line with previous studies of successful creativity training programs the ANC participants are first introduced to cognitive concepts of creativity, before applying these concepts to a relevant real world creative problem. The novelty in the ANC program is that the conceptualization of creativity is built on neuroscience, and a crucial aspect of the course is giving the students a thorough understanding of the neuroscience of creativity. Previous studies have reported that the conceptualization of creativity used in such training is of major importance for the success of the training, and we believe that the neuroscience of creativity offers a novel conceptualization for creativity training. Here we present pre/post-training tests showing that ANC students gained more fluency in divergent thinking (a traditional measure of trait creativity) than those in highly similar courses without the neuroscience component, suggesting that principles from neuroscience can contribute effectively to creativity training and produce measurable results on creativity tests. The evidence presented indicates that the inclusion of neuroscience principles in a creativity course can in 8 weeks increase divergent thinking skills with an individual relative average of 28.5%

Not Quite Equal Odds: Openness to Experience Moderates the Relation Between Quantity and Quality of Ideas in Divergent Production

Since brainstorming was introduced as a technique in 1953 it has been assumed that the best way to produce good ideas is through the production of many ideas, which has later been named the equal-odds rule. However, this finding that productivity often leads to creative quality has rarely been examined in psychometric studies of creative cognition. To close this knowledge gap, we examined the relationship between individual differences in creative personality, as assessed by the personality trait openness to experience, and both the quantity and quality of ideas produced in a divergent thinking task. Across 154 graduate students we found a positive and significant relationship between creative personality and the number of ideas produced, as well as their creative value. The present results indicate that while quantity does breed quality in creative production, the effect is moderated by individual differences, specifically the personality trait Openness to Experience. As the level of Openness to Experience increases, the relation of quantity of ideas to average Creative value gradually becomes positive and significant. We discuss the possible reasons for and implications of our findings

Gut bacteria and necrotizing enterocolitis: cause or effect?

Development of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) is considered to be dependent on the bacterial colonisation of the gut. With little concordance between published data and a recent study failing to detect a common strain in infants with NEC, more questions than answers are arising about our understanding of this complex disease