The role of alpha oscillations in free- and goal-directed semantic associations.

ABSTRACT: Alpha oscillations are known to play a central role in several higher-order cognitive functions, especially selective attention, working memory, semantic memory, and creative thinking. Nonetheless, we still know very little about the role of alpha in the generation of more remote semantic associations, which is key to creative and semantic cognition. Furthermore, it remains unclear how these oscillations are shaped by the intention to "be creative," which is the case in most creativity tasks. We aimed to address these gaps in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we compared alpha oscillatory activity (using a method which distinguishes genuine oscillatory activity from transient events) during the generation of free associations which were more vs. less distant from a given concept. In Experi

SUBMITTER: Zioga I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11226545 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature