Is there a difference between an imaginative mind and a creative mind?
In this episode of the Fueling Creativity Podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood speak with Dr. Anna Abraham, an E. Paul Torrance Professor and Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at UGA’s Mary Frances Early College of Education. Anna investigates the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying creativity and other aspects of the human imagination.
In part one of this two-part interview, you’ll gain insight into the similarities and differences between a creative mind and an imaginative mind based on neuroscientific research. Anna breaks down her findings on the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying creativity and how teachers can translate these to a classroom environment. Anna also identifies problems and potential solutions in unimodal forms of teaching and learning as part of the standard educational curriculum.
If we know that these [neuronetworks] are used in purposeful ways, how to we execute these networks in the classroom?
Featured Guest
Anna Abraham, Ph.D. is the E. Paul Torrance Professor and the Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at UGA’s Mary Frances Early College of Education. Her educational and professional training has been within the disciplines of Psychology and Neuroscience, and she has worked across a diverse range of academic institutions and departments the world over, all of which have informed her multidisciplinary focus. She investigates the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying creativity and other aspects of the human imagination. Her wide-ranging contributions to the field of creativity include theoretical, methodological and empirical advances in the context of basic and applied research. She has penned numerous publications including the sole authored book, The Neuroscience of Creativity (2018, Cambridge University Press), and the multidisciplinary edited volume, The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination (2020). She is the Founding Editor of The Cambridge Elements Series in Creativity and the Imagination.
