It is necessary to find out the relationship between scientific creativity and cognitive control. 302 students were recruited from zunyi normal University for a scientific creativity test. According to the total score of the scientific creativity test, the top 5% of the subjects(15 students, 6 males and 9 females) were selected as the high scientific creativity group, and the last 5% of the subjects(15 students, 5 males and 10 females) were selected as the low scientific creativity group. Stroop task and fMRI scan were performed on two groups of subjects. To observe the cognitive control ability of individuals with different levels of scientific creativity and its neural mechanism.
The results showed that under CC condition, there was no significant difference in reaction time and error rate between subjects with different levels of scientific creativity. On the other hand, under the condition of IC, subjects with higher level of scientific creativity showed stronger cognitive inhibition ability, and showed lower error rate interference under inconsistent experimental materials compared with subjects with lower level of scientific creativity. Individuals with high scientific creativity have stronger cognitive inhibition ability. While that individual with low scientific creativity show poor cognitive inhibition. And the scientific creativity is significantly related to the accuracy rate under IC conditions. fMRI results show that there are obvious differences in resting spontaneous nerve activity between high and low creative individuals, and this difference is mainly concentrated in the frontal lobe area related to cognitive control. The ALFF value of the medial prefrontal cortex(mPFC) in the high scientific creativity group was significantly lower than that in the low scientific creativity group. MPFC is an important brain area of cognitive control network. This shows that the cognitive control network of individuals with high scientific creativity level is more active.
Therefore, individuals with different levels of scientific creativity have different cognitive control functions. And this difference has a neurological basis.