ワシントン大学の研究
これを個別・被検者データメタアナリシスで検討
Individual Participant Data (IPD) meta-analysis
62,129母子対
母乳授乳期間長いと人工ミルク(bottle-feeding)に比べで左利きが少ない
複雑な脳機能発達へのさらなる知見が加わった?
Breastfeeding and handedness: a systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data
Philippe P. Hujoel
Received 08 Jun 2018, Accepted 23 Nov 2018, Published online: 18 Dec 2018
Download citation https://doi.org/10.1080/1357650X.2018.1555254
Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1357650X.2018.1555254
「母乳育児が6〜9ヶ月続く必要があるという独立した証拠を提供するので、それは重要です。」というコメントだが、無理な場合もあるわけで、解釈やコメントには注意が必要だろう。
脳のことはあまりに不明なことが多い。
左脳が創造性にかかわるというmyth(神話)すら否定的・批判的
The Neuroscience of Creativity: A Q&A with Anna Abraham
The latest state of the field of the neuroscience of creativity
By Scott Barry Kaufman on January 4, 2019
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-neuroscience-of-creativity-a-q-a-with-anna-abraham/
SBK: What’s the difference between “brain-to-process” and “process-to-brain” explanation of creativity?
AA: The difference there lies in directions of exploration when uncovering the brain basis of creativity. If your starting point is a process that is of especial relevance to creativity, such as improvisation, and you examine the brain correlates of the same, you will be undertaking a process-to-brain exploration. One can go the other way round as well - by starting at the level of a brain structure or brain activity pattern that is (or stands to be) of especial relevance to creativity. Let’s say we travel back in time and manage to get a hold of Mozart’s brain postmortem. Upon examining it, we discover the habenular nuclei in Mozart’s brain are atypical in some manner. We might see this as reason enough to hypothesize that Mozart’s staggering proficiency in composition may have its roots in the atypicality of this neuroanatomical structure in his brain. This would be an example of the brain-to-process exploration and it is one that has actually been adopted in the examination of Einstein’s brain.
SBK: Why does the myth of the “creative right brain” still persist? Is there any truth at all to this myth?
AA: Like most persistent myths, even if some seed of truth was associated with the initial development of the idea, the claim so stated amounts to a lazy generalization and is incorrect. The brain’s right hemisphere is not a separate organ whose workings can be regarded in isolation from that of the left hemisphere in most human beings. It is also incorrect to conclude that the left brain is uncreative. In fact even the earliest scholars who explored the brain lateralization in relation to creativity emphasized the importance of both hemispheres. Indeed this is what was held to be unique about creativity compared to other highly lateralized psychological functions. In an era which saw the uncovering of the dominant involvement of one hemisphere over the other for many functions, and the left hemisphere received preeminent status for its crucial role in complex functions like language, a push against the tide by emphasizing the need to also recognize the importance of the right hemisphere for complex functions like creativity somehow got translated over time into the only ‘creative right brain’ meme. It is the sort of thing that routinely happens when crafting accessible sound bites to convey scientific findings.
SBK: What are some of the intricacies of frontal lobe function in relation to creativity?
AA: Trying to pin down the nature of frontal lobe function in relation to creativity often feels like holding on to a slippery fish. The first thing to bear in mind is that it is a massive heterogeneous structure covering about a third of the neocortex and that different parts of the frontal lobes are involved when we engage in creative ideation. Another feature of the frontal lobe function is that damage to different parts of this brain region results in some disadvantages in creative performance but also with specific advantages. For instance, damage to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has been associated with more success in insight problem solving and lesions in frontopolar regions with a greater ability to overcome the constraints of salient examples when creating something new. Whether the advantages and disadvantages in creativity are rooted in which specific aspects of creative cognition are being examined, or in the location and extent of lesion site in the brain, or in the dynamics of implicated wider brain networks, are as yet unknown.
SBK: What are the differing brain correlates of insight, analogy, and metaphor cognitive processing?
AA: All these operations of creative cognition have overlapping brain correlates, but what differs are the specific brain regions that are held to be of significance in each of these processes. The role of frontal poles is emphasized in the case of analogical reasoning, the lateral inferior frontal gyrus in metaphor processing, and anterior aspects of the superior temporal gyrus in insight. A clear affirmation of the particular relevance of these brain areas for each of these processes would be to examine all of them within one experimental paradigm.