Brain correlates underlying creative thinking: EEG alpha activity in professional vs. novice dancers
Section snippets
Participants
Thirty-four participants took part in this study. Due to extensive EEG artifacts the data of two persons had to be excluded from further analyses. The remaining sample (n = 32) consisted of 15 professional dances (11 females; mean age = 26.93, SD = 6.41) and 17 novices (14 females; mean age = 23.94, SD = 3.67). The group of professional dancers has completed a comprehensive training in dance and has perennial professional experience in this domain; they all started dancing already in early childhood.
Behavioral results
There were no significant differences between professional dancers and novices with respect to age (p > 0.05) and state anxiety during the EEG recording session (p > 0.05). Moreover, we observed no significant group differences with respect to the broad Big Five personality dimensions. However, professional dancers tend (p = 0.053) to display higher scores on the personality dimension openness to new experiences which is seen in close relation to creativity (e.g. Feist, 1998, King et al., 1996). With
Discussion
In this study we investigated EEG alpha activity in professional dancers who have attained a high level of expertise in ballet or modern dance. The group of professional dancers was compared with a group of novices who has only basic experience in dancing and completed no comprehensive training in this domain. The EEG was recorded during the performance of two different dancing imagery tasks which considerably differed with respect to their creative demands. In the dance improvisation task they
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to express their large gratitude to Cornelia Rendl and Andreas Schirgi for organizing and conducting the EEG test sessions and for analyzing the EEG data with great engagement.
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