https://youtu.be/Et8uxK73i_k
en français
— conference recorded at Les Champs Libres (Rennes) in December 2023 in the framework of the series "What stories for our time?", moderated by Yann Apperry - Screenwriter, Playwright and Novelist - and Nicolás Buenaventura - Writer-director and Storyteller.
Neuroscience sheds new light on the myth of Creative Genius.Would we all be able to create streams of imaginary worlds and wild stories?With Jan Schomburg - Screenwriter & Director (Germany), Samah Karaki - Neuroscience researcher (Lebanon & France) and T
amara Russell - Neuroscience researcher and Martial Arts specialist (UK) as well as Thomas Roze (France) - Osteopath and witness of this round-table.
Samah Karaki
« And then the inspiration would come from the default network of the brain that actually stored all this, this salad of experiences. And instead of searching, it's a cooking recipe. »
Automate to free us.
Right now, we are all doing lots of physiological mechanisms in a very automatic way.
You're not aware that you're breathing. Actually, you're surviving each other second. You're about to die, and then you breathe, and you're alive again.
And you're doing this because you are kind of relying on this autonomous nervous system that is telling you, I'm taking care of digesting your food and maintaining your body temperature and fighting any stranger germ coming into your body so that you can listen to these people talking, right? You are available to do something else. Your executive system is not aware, not preoccupied by all of these issues, right? So, what's amazing in our brain that not only our survival issues are automatic, but also everything that you've been through.
The language I'm using, I'm not born speaking English and so, at some point, I had to automatize this language so that I can go beyond the symbols and bring meaning to what I'm saying. The way we walk, the way we sit, everything you're doing right now is actually... you're not processing this actively. We need to be first grateful to have a system that is allowing us to be available to do something else.
Accept the ambiguity and uncertainty of the world.
We rely on this automatic system because we don't have enough energy to process the world every time we look at it. But bias is actually when this system fails.
For example, we've been a few hours together, but I already judged you based on my automatic cultural, social experience, past experiences of people that look like you, that behave like you, right? I need sometimes to say actually, “I don't know you”. And I know that I'm having this because I'm having this judgment automatically. But I need also to accept that you are an ambiguous object. But it's not OK for me to accept this for everybody here because it's such a cognitive load to accept the ambiguity of the world and the uncertainty of the world.
I don't want to sound like other neuroscientists asking people to have critical thinking and to always think against ourselves with this metacognitive issue. Because we don't have enough energy for that. But if I want to delve into a creative process, then I must be doing what you talked about, Jan. I need to fight against my urge to describe the world the way I see it. It's actually to forget about myself, which is kind of impossible, but we tend towards this. And maybe a trick that we can use is instead of me doing this work alone,
