Neuroanatomy of Freestyle Rapping

What happens inside the brain of someone like Eminem when he freestyles?

The prestigious magazine Nature has the answer.

While freestyling, brain scans revealed that areas in the prefrontal cortex associated with "organization and drive" rose in activity, while areas responsible for self-assessment and restraint froze. While freestyling, "an entire, unique network emerges ... motivation, language, emotion, motor function, sensory processing and the representation of the artists' subject experience all interact in unusual ways."

The researchers believe this activity inside the prefrontal cortex is fundamental to all expressions of creativity - not just freestyling. So, maybe man is most genuine early on in the creative process ... and as time lapses, we become less so.

Distrust Increases Creativity

It would seem that distrust and creativity are incompatible. When you are distrustful, you are less likely to share information, something crucial for creativity to emerge in social settings.

Research, however, reveals that distrust seems to foster thinking about non-obvious alternatives to potentially deceptive outcomes, i.e. distrust may foster creativity. While distrust harmed public creativity, distrust enhanced private creativity and researchers feel enhanced cognitive flexibility is the mechanism by which this occurs.

The "How" Behind Late Bloomers

Malcolm Gladwell penned an insightful article on creativity and genius back in 2008. He takes two genius' from the world of painting - Picasso and Cezanne - and asks what it was about Cezanne that didn't allow him to bloom until much later than Picasso.

Gladwell notes a few salient points:

1) Creative genius is either conceptual and experimental; i.e. the Picasso's (conceptual) of the world don't search for things in their work, they know from the beginning what they want and their work is only the means to that already defined end. In contrast, there are the Cezanne's (experimental) who try and fail repeatedly because their end goal isn't known ... yet.

2) Late bloomers need a support system or they simply cannot sustain the level of effort needed to hone their craft.

3) Late bloomers, in one sense, deserve more praise than conceptual genius' because their accomplishment requires far more forbearance and blind faith to materialize.