On Vandervert et al. 'Working Memory, Cerebellum, and Creativity'

摘要

One thing that can be said about Vandervert, Schimpf, and Liu's proposal (this issue) is that it is a strikingly "out-of-the-box" approach to creative process. To say that "exploratory cerebellar modulations of cortical activity associated with working memory are the fundamental sources of creative and innovative solutions" is quite a dramatic contention given the paucity of material, especially clinical studies, that support such a claim. As I read the account, apart from the absolute lack of evidence for the theory, the arguments that need to be disentangled include the relation of working memory to creative thought; the relation of the cerebellum to working memory; and the relation of the cerebellum in motility to perceptual processes underlying creativity. Let me begin with some personal anecdotes concerning my own exposure to the possibility that the cerebellum might play a role in functions other than motility. The first inkling of this possibility developed out of early work on emotional expression (Brown, 1967), in which there was speculation that the inferior olive modulates emotional display by way of the rubro-olivo-dentate pathway, an idea, for which evidence has recently been advanced, that arose from the seemingly unrelated problem of palatal myoclonus (Hermann & Brown, 1967). This suggested that inferior olive might influence upper midbrain systems involved in affective display through an inhibitory discharge from the dentate nucleus.