We also have to accept the possibility that no treatment, including psychotherapeutic, might come as a solution to problems that are likely to be grounded in the developmental, individual, and often transgenerational history of individuals. Acknowledgments The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose which are relevant to the content of this manuscript. Dr Paradiso was this website supported by the Edward J. Mallinckrodt Jr Foundation, the Dana Foundation, NARSAD, and an NIH Career development award (5K23AG027837).
The capacity to be creative is one of the most important characteristics that human beings possess. Long ago, some of our ancestors

Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical manifested the human capacity for creativity by seeing a grinding Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical tool in a stone,

a piercing projectile weapon in a thin cuneiform shaped piece of flint, or a mechanism for moving things more easily in a round wheel-shaped object. They developed the capacity to pass information on to future generations by telling oral tales, and ultimately they developed ways to record these tales in writing. They identified principles of geometry Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and the physics of force and its mechanisms and built pyramids and temples. They painted in caves and later in temples using natural colors such as charcoal, ultimately moving on to fresco, oil, and acrylic. A “great chain of being” extends from them in the past to us in the present. Some of our great current creative people discover biological principles such as the role of telomerase, develop computers and digital imaging, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical design techniques for unmanned space research, imagine new worlds such as those of Star Wars, or pass on the experience of beauty or morality through novels and essays. Creativity is a topic of enormous importance—and one that poses enormous challenges. Studying it from a scientific perspective, as opposed to an esthetic one, raises a daunting series of Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical questions. How should

it be defined? Should we conceive of it as a unitary construct, or should we posit that there are “multiple creativities,” much as Gardner has argued that there are “multiple intelligences.”1 What is the nature of the creative process? Does it involve flashes of insight, or slow preparatory processes, or both?2,3 Is there a continuum between “big C” (genius-like creativity possessed by only a few) and “little c” (ordinary creativity that all human beings possess)?4 What methods can be used to study either it? How, during a golden age of neuroscience, can we develop ways to understand and measure its neural mechanisms? Some of these questions are addressed by Simonton in this issue. Here we focus on the topic of unitary creativity vs multiple creativities and the measurement of neural mechanisms. Unitary vs multiple creativities: are there two cultures? For many lay people, the word “creative” evokes images of novelists, poets, composers, and visual artists.