Few features of humanity are more fascinating than creativity, and few fields are more dynamic

now than neuroscience.

Rex Young is a neuroscientist who puts the two together.

He's working on a cutting edge of science and getting a new view of the creativity of

the everyday as of the genius.

He and his colleagues unsettle long-held beliefs about who is creative and who is not.

After seeing practical, often common sense truths about how we prime our brains to unlock

what is novel and useful.

Rex Young has notably helped describe something called transient hypofrontality.

In layman's terms, it's now possible to see the difference between intelligence and

creativity in the brain.

We can watch the brain calm its powerful, organizing frontal lobes and become more meandering,

less directed in order to make creative connections.

And Rex Young gives himself over to a meandering conversation with us.

On new connections, we might make between creativity and family life, creativity and aging,

creativity and purpose.

This work with creativity is important because I think it is a uniquely human characteristic

that provides meaning in one's life.

Whether it's spiritual, personal, familial, it really hits all those buttons.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on Being.

Rex Young is an assistant research professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the

University of New Mexico.

...