Everyone has a different threshold for what they consider weird or unhinged. Some might look at this collection of images and think they’re completely bizarre, while others might just shrug and say, eh, that’s just the internet doing its thing. But if you fall into the latter category—where strange images don’t really faze you—you might actually be more creative than you think.
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A study published in Brain and Cognition, by researchers Madeleine Gross, James Elliott, and Jonathan Schooler, suggests that creativity is linked to how the brain responds (or doesn’t respond) to unusual, or “oddball,” stimuli. This means creative people interpret surprising information differently, which may be part of what fuels their unique way of thinking.
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#6 Several Graffiti Artists Got Together To Tag This Soon-To-Be-Demolished Building In Miami During Art Basel Last Week
Traditionally, creativity has been associated with broad or unfocused attention. This helps explain why creative people often find inspiration in the most unexpected places—they’re naturally drawn to connections others might overlook. Some researchers believe this happens due to a lack of cognitive control, but Gross and her team had another theory: what if creative people process salience differently?
#8 The Bond Between A Yak And His Herder Is Sacred
Salience processing is your brain’s way of deciding what’s worth paying attention to. Imagine you’re in a crowded café. There’s background noise, people talking, and music playing. But if someone says your name across the room, your brain immediately picks it up. That’s salience processing in action.
It helps us zero in on what matters, whether it’s something unexpected, emotionally important, or useful for survival. This process takes place automatically, making sure we don’t get overwhelmed by everything around us and instead focus on the most relevant information.
To test their theory, the researchers ran two studies. In the first, 51 participants from the University of California, Santa Barbara, completed a creativity test called the Incomplete Figures Task. They were given a few random lines and had to turn them into drawings within 10 minutes.
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Next, they moved on to an oddball task while wearing EEG caps (which measure brain activity). They were shown a sequence of images, mostly of rocks, but every now and then, a picture of an apple would appear, paired with a sound. The researchers focused on how the participants’ brains reacted to these unexpected apple images, specifically looking at a brainwave called P300, which spikes when something surprising or noteworthy happens.
The result? Creative individuals had a weaker P300 response. In plain English, their brains didn’t find the “odd” images as surprising as those who were less creative.
#19 A Man Poses For A Photo On A Camel In Front Of A Soyuz Rocket At Baikonur, Kazakh Ssr, In The 1980s
“When tackling a creative problem, we often get stuck on the ‘obvious’ aspects, making it challenging to think outside the box and notice unusual elements within the problem space,” Gross told PsyPost. “Our study found that creative individuals do not perceive unusual information as odd; they process it similarly to typical information.
“This may enhance creative thinking by making it more likely that unconventional details are noticed and considered, providing a fresh perspective during the creative process,” she added. “In other words, creative individuals may not be confined by conventional boundaries because they don’t distinguish between odd and typical in the same way.”
