Right temporal alpha oscillations as a neural mechanism for inhibiting obvious associations.

ABSTRACT: Creative cognition requires mental exploration of remotely connected concepts while suppressing dominant ones. Across four experiments using different samples of participants, we provide evidence that right temporal alpha oscillations play a crucial role in inhibiting habitual thinking modes, thereby paving the way for accessing more remote ideas. In the first experiment, participants completed the compound remote associate task (RAT) in three separate sessions: during right temporal alpha (10 Hz) transcranial alternating current brain stimulation (tACS), left temporal alpha tACS, and sham tACS. Participants performed better under right tACS only on RAT items in which two of the three words shared misleading semantic associations. In the second experiment, we measured EEG while the partici

SUBMITTER: Luft CDB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6310824 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature