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On “How Working Memory and the Cerebellum Collaborate to Produce Creativity and Innovation” by L. R. Vandervert, P. H. Schimpf, and H. Liu

In their article, Vandervert, Schimpf, and Liu (this issue) formulated an attractive hypothesis about the mechanism by which our brain generates a creative and innovative thought to solve a novel problem. To do this, the authors integrated current knowledge and theories on the working memory of the prefrontal cortex and on internal model of the cerebellum. They developed the hypothesis step by step along the hierarchy evolutionarily built in the brain. The proposed hypothesis unconventionally explains insight and intuition and the process of creative discovery described by Einstein. I understand that the core process of the proposed mechanism is that an activity of the cerebral cortex is redescribed in an internal model of the cerebellum through learning in repeated rehearsals. This is currently considered as a process that automatizes a learned movement or thought. However, the authors uniquely placed an emphasis on the phase where, facing a novel problem, a new model is being formed or reformed by learning. These are two aspects of the same process, appearing before and after learning proceeds. Once a model that matches a novel problem is formed, it is no longer a new model, and it becomes one of the routine models that automatize learned movements or thoughts. These processes are schematically shown in Figures 1 and 2 below (Figures 4 and 7 from Ito, 2005). Figure 1 illustrates the control system for voluntary movement. Although Figure 1 depicts motor control (e.g., the movement of a limb), the series of steps in the flow diagram is also applicable to the manipulation of mental models in, for example, working memory (thought) that involves a broad variety of functions of the cerebral cortex (Ito, 2005, p. 102). In Figure 1, an urge for an action is initiated in the supplementary motor area (SMA), premotor area (PMA), or anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG). This constitutes the instructional signal (line a) to action. Forward cerebellar models adaptively modify the effect of internal feedback (line c) through error calculations. The effect of external feedback (line b) that is disruptive to the operation of intended movement (or thought) is replaced by c. Figure 2 shows how forward models arising in the cerebellum would, according to Vandervert, Schimpf, and Liu, contribute adaptive control to working memory thought processes (e.g., the central executive) originating in the prefrontal cortex. X represents the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG) and, likely, other unidentified cortical areas, which originally gave rise to instructional signals for the executive cortex. One point that may need to be clarified is whether the cerebellum by itself generates a new model or whether it merely redescribes a new activity generated in the cerebral cortex. Because the cerebellar neuronal circuitry performs a special type of error-driven learnCreativity Research Journal 2007, Vol. 19, No. 1, 35–38 Copyright © 2007 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.