The Cognitive Neuroscience of Creativity Laboratory (CNCL) at Penn State University studies the psychology and neuroscience of creative thinking.
Our lab uses a combination of behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational approaches to investigate the mechanisms underlying human creativity. We create open-access tools for evaluating creative thinking and examine creativity across diverse domains, such as music, science, and education.
Lab News
Dr. Beaty Gives a Talk at University of Virginia
Dr. Beaty recently gave a virtual talk titled “Making connections: Creativity, learning, and associative thinking” at the University of Virginia’s cognitive psychology colloquium!
Dr. Beaty Gives a Talk at Princeton University
Dr. Beaty recently presented on creativity and associative thinking at the Music-Evoked Imaginings Workshop at Princeton University! The workshop focused on new insights into the psychology of the imagination considering the case of daydreams sustained while listening to music.
New Postdoc Joins CNCL
Simon Ceh recently joined the lab as a Fulbright postdoctoral researcher from Austria. He was one of five people in all of Austria to have received this fellowship. Welcome to the lab, Simon!
Dr. Beaty Gives Talks in Germany and Italy
Dr. Beaty recently gave a talk on bridging fields in creativity research at the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Study in Germany and a keynote address on using AI to assess and enhance human creativity at the 2024 Marconi Institute for Creativity in Italy!
CNCL RA starts new position at Harvard lab
Congratulations to former CNCL RA Shuyao Wang, who recently started as a research assistant for Dr. Leah Somerville’s lab at Harvard University, the Affective Neuroscience and Development Laboratory. Great job, Shuyao!
New Papers
New preprint on ArXiv
Dr. Laverghetta, Simone Luchini, and Dr. Beaty recently put up a preprint on ArXiv titled “The creative psychometric item generator: a framework for item generation and validation using large language models”. Check out the paper here!
New article in Thinking Skills and Creativity
Clin Lai and Dr. Beaty recently coauthored a new paper in Thinking Skills and Creativity titled “Fostering creativity in science education reshapes semantic memory”. Check out the paper here!
New article in Creativity Research Journal
Paul DiStefano, Dr. Patterson, and Dr. Beaty recently coauthored a new paper in Creativity Research Journal titled “Automatic Scoring of Metaphor Creativity with Large Language Models”. Congratulations to Paul on his first first-author publication! Check out the paper here!
New preprint on Research Square
Simone Luchini and Dr. Beaty recently put up a preprint on Research Square titled “Automated Scoring of Open-Ended Question Complexity: A Large Language Model Approach”. Check out the paper here!
New article in Cerebral Cortex
Dan Zeitlen and Dr. Beaty recently coauthored a new paper in Cerebral Cortex titled “Diverse functional interaction driven by control-default network hubs supports creative thinking” Check out the paper here!