The neurocognitive cornerstones of creative thought

Creative thought refers to the generation of novel and valuable ideas. Creative thinking is fundamental to human advances throughout history and central to everyday problem solving. Despite a century of intensive efforts, its neurocognitive mechanisms remain enigmatic – what cognitive processes support creative thought? Which brain regions underpin these processes? How do these brain regions interact and give rise to creative thought? While creativity research has largely been pursued in isolation, there is a wealth of relevant knowledge in cognitive and clinical neuroscience that could be drawn from and thereby advance our understanding of the cognitive and neural basis of creative thought. Thus, in this Perspective we outline the striking cognitive and neural parallels across the literatures and propose how domain general neurocognitive processes provide the necessary cornerstones for understanding creative thought.