Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite! | Video on TED.com

 Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension -- and our creative thinking. So why do we still feel embarrassed when we're caught doodling in a meeting? Sunni Brown says: Doodlers, unite! She makes the case for unlocking your brain via pad and pen.

Review of Creativity From Constraints: The Psychology Of Breakthrough by Patricia D. Stokes

Here is a review of Creativity from Contraints: The Psychology of Breakthrough by Patricia Stokes. Stokes is a former advertising graphic artist who became a psychologist following her desire to understand creative behaviour as she had observed it in her profession. In summary, Stokes proposes there are four main constraints to creativity - domain, cognition,variability, talent - and it is how come to understand and articulate these constraints in context that will enable the kind of creative behaviours reuired to  obtain decision making breakthroughs that can be considered creative as opposed to more of the same.   

The precipice of creativity: the improvising mind - ABC - All In The Mind

Whether it's choosing words to make up a sentence or walking along a crowded street, we're all capable of improvising. But musical improvisation fills us with amazement. How do musicians make the moment-by-moment decisions to create spontaneous music that's more than noise -- and what's going on in their brains to make it all happen?

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The cognitive neuroscience of creativity - Arne Dietrich, American University of Beirut

This paper is academic in style. However for those interested in this topic, it provides important description of the tension in the neural pathways between how neural computation produces emotional content and cognitive analysis which in turns produces creativity.

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How the Illusion of Being Observed Can Make You a Better Person: Van Der Linden, London School of Economics

Many years ago, when I was still in high school, I was extremely fond of chewing gum, especially during class hours. However, sooner or later the chewing gum would either lose its taste or I would become bored with it. After a while, I would start looking around, wondering how I could get rid of the gum nice and quietly. As you might have guessed by now, yes, I was that kid sticking his used gum underneath the desk. And as I grew older, I started noticing that I wasn’t the only one deviating from the social norms that society has laid out for us. How often is it that we conveniently forget to return dirty food trays in the cafeteria? Or let our dogs poop in the park and head off before anyone has a chance to notice? I think Thomas Jefferson was on a similar train of thought when he wrote, “Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.” I always found this to be a particularly interesting quote, as it reminds us of the fact that we tend to be on our best behavior when we know that we are being observed. While this may seem obvious, new research points to something far less obvious:

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