Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to be creative. So our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
So my guest today is Bradley Cooke. We went to college together back in the day at Vassar and have kind of reconnected multiple times over the years. So it's really great to see you and be here with you. So we were both studying cognitive science at Vassar, and that's kind of how we initially met and connected. And then you went on to become a real live neuroscientist, and I've kind-of followed your career over the years.
So you're currently a program director at the National Institutes of Health, overseeing a portfolio of research into the neurobiology of obesity and diabetes, which I definitely want to hear more about. You've also done a lot of teaching and public speaking on the topic of neuroscience and authored a number of scientific articles.
So I'm really curious to hear today, you know, your perspectives on neuroscience and creativity. And as we were kind of talking and preparing for this conversation, we also have a sort-of common interest in the connections between creativity and psychedelics. So that's something we'll get into. And there's a lot of really interesting research coming out these days on that topic.
So we were texting back and forth the other day and just kind of spitballing, throwing some ideas around, brainstorming and the word sprezzatura came up. So I love the randomness of that, and I think that's a great place to just dive in and see where we go. So how did that come up for you and what does it mean, for those who may not know?
Brad: Well, that's a great question. Yeah. So. Well, hello, Melinda, and hello, everybody. It's great to be on this podcast. And the answer to your question is that the word literally popped into my head as I was at the gym, you know, working out. I shared that word with a friend, a very erudite and educated friend who also happens to be the coach. And he said, “I know what that means. It's the art of studied nonchalance,” and…
Melinda: I had to look it up myself.
Brad: Like error or sort of apparently inadvertent, but actually deliberate, error in the way one presents oneself. And in Italian, the word I think usually refers to fashionable dressing. But to me, I guess the reason it came up is because I've been thinking about this podcast, and although I don't speak Italian, I think the relevance is that my thoughts about creativity and art and the brain all circle around this concept of the dynamic interplay between predictability and chaos.
Melinda: Yes.
Brad: Right, and so sprezzatura, you know, sort of defines a kind-of liminal space between what's predictable: One can imagine a kind-of sharply dressed, symmetrical, very nattily dressed person and on the one hand, and a slob on the other. And somewhere in the middle is sprezzatura. That is a person who's who seems casually very fashionable. And so his carriage or her persona embodies that boundary between predictability and unpredictability.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that. And that actually reminds me, now that you're saying this, of Dan Siegel's work, you know, where he's talking about interpersonal neurobiology and integration. And he kind of talks about this spectrum between chaos and rigidity. And it seems like maybe there's a parallel there, yeah.
Brad: Yeah, I think that's true. And is he referring to human personality, like some people are very rigid and others are very chaotic.
Melinda: Well, he's kind of going in the direction of how do we best integrate ourselves and our nervous systems, and that the ideal would be finding a balance, right, between chaos, tension, you know, anxiety and rigidity, you know, really controlling. You know, I'm paraphrasing, but just interesting, that middle ground, right?
Brad: Yeah, exactly. Although I would say that, you know, I think in some cases, people with anxiety are often very rigid.
Melinda: That’s true.
Brad: Their thoughts are locked in to a certain way of thinking, right, catastrophic thinking about any potential future is inevitably associated with the worst possible outcome. That's a kind of rigidity.
Melinda: Yeah, right. Yes.
Brad: So there's a balance, for sure. And yeah, I think that, again, sort of is the that's the central notion that I think about when I think about creativity in the brain.
Melinda: Yeah, say more.
Brad: So another theme that has come to mind, is because I love listening to music, including your music. So, I and I'm curious what your thoughts on this are. I think music, well, let's see, I guess music characterizes a central idea about creativity in art, which is seen in all artistic modalities, and that is of repetition.
Melinda: Yes.
Brad: Right, so music is one of those forms of human behavior that, in which, repetition is expected and allowed. But if we were having a conversation and all I did was repeat the same sentence or phrase over and over again, you would think I was crazy. But when someone is producing music, the repetition of phrases is central.
Melinda: Yes. And just knowing that the chorus to your favorite song is coming up, and you can sing along, and you know all the words to it. And obviously it's different, you know, with jazz, which is more improvisational and spontaneous each time. But you're right. You know, with music, there is this kind of mathematical quality about it.
And we were talking about patterns and creativity, right. And that, you know, for something to be perhaps considered esthetically pleasing, you know, in a musical sense, that there is some recognizable order to it. It's not just noise, right. Yeah.
Brad: Exactly. And yet, music that was wholly repetitive would be boring. And so what makes it really great, what makes music great, I think, is that liminal space between predictability and chaos.
Melinda: Yes.
Brad: Right. And I think great music uses repetition as a kind of juxtaposition against that which is unexpected and makes something really worth listening to. Mathematical reminds me of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Melinda: Yes.
Brad: Right. Mathematical. And architectural. But at the same time, there is order and variation mixed together in an incredible way.
Melinda: Yeah. And I'm also thinking about, you know, recorded music versus live music, because I've been playing a lot of live music lately. And I just actually came from a recording session with a new song that I've been working on with a collaborator, and we were recording it and, you know, but every time we play it, because it's still very new, it's a little bit different every time.
We're both still like, really getting it, you know, down. And so even though it has a set pattern and lyrics and chord changes and things like that, there's still this quality that we never quite know how it's going to come out each time. And there's something really exciting about that as well. Yeah.
Brad: Yes. Yeah, for sure. Jazz is another interesting example because it's, you know, perhaps if there's a spectrum between predictability and rigidity and total chaos, jazz manages to be closer to the unpredictable side. But inevitably, there's always the return to a melody. A song like My Funny Valentine by John Coltrane, the theme might be repeated once or twice in a 12 minute song. Yet, that's enough for us to recognize the tune, and to hook our ears to listen to that resolution, of what seems chaotic sometimes, into a more predictable pattern.
Melinda: Yes, it kind of gives an anchor point, if you will.
Brad: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that idea of chaos versus predictability led me to think about visual art. And there, for some reason, I can't even identify which picture I'm thinking of. But just imagine a field of vertical lines, perhaps drawn by a pen or, you know, a pen and ink. And if one of those lines is, perhaps the final line in a vertical array, is just slightly, slightly greater distance from the others than that, you know, that could be artistic, but it certainly embodies that tension or liminal space between predictability and chaos.
Melinda: Definitely
Brad: What some modern artists have gotten away with or been able to execute something really amazing with something as simple as that.
Melinda: Yes, just one, you know, everything is quite uniform. And then just like one thing or, you know, I practice and teach contemplative photography and, you know, we're always urging people to really just pay attention to what is around, what you see, what catches your attention, and photograph that.
And like you can't see it in the frame right now, but you can see this soundproofing behind me.
It's got kind-of that uniform quality with the with the horizontal lines. But I'm looking at another place where I see a yellow cord hanging down, so it disrupts the pattern, and that might be something I would take a photograph of because that's what makes it interesting, actually. That variation. Yeah.
Brad: Yeah.
Melinda: Yeah. So I'm, you know, kind of thinking about the intersections of, you know, creativity, neuroscience, and psychedelics. I was looking into some of the contemporary research on the topic and, you know, what stood out to me is that there's a lot of parallels [with mindfulness]. So my own dissertation research was looking at the connections between mindfulness and creativity, and some of the same themes seem to be arising in connection with the psychedelics research.
So, you know, some of the ways that we define creativity in creativity studies are that, you know, for something to be considered creative, it should be both novel and useful. So in the sense that it hasn't been done before. But it also has, you know, some use, some productive value. And I personally have a much broader definition of creativity, which is, you know, anything, that, it doesn't necessarily have to be useful in an everyday sense. But if it brings more beauty, or more meaning, or more enrichment to the world, you know, as in the case of art.
And so one of the hallmarks of creativity is associative or divergent thinking, right? It's making connections between things that might not have an obvious relationship or connection. So there's all these divergent thinking tests, right, where, you know, come up with as many uses for a brick or, you know, a water bottle or whatever it might be. And the more you can come up with, the more creative you are. And interestingly, it seems that a lot of this research in psychedelics is pointing to, you know, a state of enhanced association. You know, making more connections between things, as well as just kind of opening up the connectivity, the general connectivity of the brain, as well as metacognition.
And then one that I love, which is the personality trait of openness to experience, which is highly correlated to creativity. And so it seems that the experience of using psychedelics kind-of opens up all of those aspects, which are also connected to creativity, so.
Brad: I agree. I love it. Yeah, that's largely in accord with my own thoughts about it for sure. If you'd like, I could share with you a sort of framework that I use to think about.
Melinda: Sure. Please.
Brad: I mean, it's certainly not unique to me. Others have suggested similar things, but let's see. One way to begin thinking about the way psychedelics work is with the concept of top-down and bottom-up processing in the brain. And a sort-of analogous or similar concept is that between prediction and well, sensory input. So top-up, or I'm sorry, bottom-up processing is equivalent to sensory input and top-down is equivalent to prediction.
And what we find is that this process of sensory input and prediction, it's remarkable. It occurs at the global level of the brain as well as almost every possible level that you can look at down to the levels of single neurons or a pair of neurons.
Melinda: Interesting.
Brad: In a pair of neurons, one is trying to predict what the other will do. The other is trying to predict what its partner will do. This goes all up to the global level of the brain. So, to long story short, it's thought that psychedelics change the balance of top-down / bottom-up processing, favoring bottom-up processing.
Melinda: Yes, opening more and more to the senses, and that sensory experience.
Brad: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, to introduce another metaphor of thinking about this, in my public talks about psychedelics, I sometimes use the idea of a landscape like a literal three dimensional, perhaps a meadow, or a field that has hills and valleys in it. We can visualize such a thing, and even perhaps visualize a large ball that could roll around on the surface of this landscape.
And Melinda, you may or may not remember from cognitive science, way back when, we can characterize the brain, the state of the brain, as being in a kind of valley. We would call that sort of a state space, and that the proclivity of the brain to enter a state space is identical to the depth of that valley.
Melinda: So say more, like, is there an, how would that work in like real-time experience?
Brad: Well, to use an extreme example, a person who is under anesthesia, whose brain state would be equivalent to a field with a very, very deep valley. Right, He is unable to wake up as long as the anesthetic drug is around.
Melinda: Right.
Brad: By contrast, a person who has taken a , the meadow of his brain is much more shallow. There may be many more little hills and valleys into which his brain can enter, into which this imaginary ball can hop from place to place, to place to place. And each place that it hops to, that this imaginary ball hops to, is equivalent to a global brain state.
Melinda: Yes. So is that connected with activation?
Brad: Yeah, exactly. So the greater the activation energy, in any nonlinear system, the more likely it is for that system to hop into a new state.
Melinda: Yes. Yes.
Brad: Right, so we can do all kinds of things to our brains to increase activation energy, including the use of caffeine or nicotine. Any sort of stimulant increases activation energy, Psychedelics don't quite work that way. They may have a slight excitatory effect, but more importantly, what they do, what they seem to do is to is to flatten the landscape a little bit.
So that, you know, to move away from the extreme example of someone under anesthesia, consider instead someone with severe anxiety, right. Their brain is captured in a way by a small set of brain states that propel them into rumination and catastrophic thinking. And it's very difficult for them to break out of it. So that's, again, sort of equivalent to maybe three or four valleys in which their brain state really can't seem to escape from.
Melinda: Yes. So this what this is reminding me of is, again, the parallels with mindfulness and meditation. You know, we talk about the ways that, you know, our brains can kind of get into a neural rut, right, if you will, if we're just kind of thinking the same kinds of thoughts, or in the same kind of state a lot of the time, and meditation and mindfulness practice can help actually create new neural pathways, different ways of being, different ways of feeling, experiencing the world.
And I do think that, you know, psychedelics are kind of a quick way to get there, and mindfulness is sort of a slower way to get there. But at the end of the road, they kind of lead to the same place in that sense.
Brad: I'm sure that's true. Yeah. I mean, the psychedelics have the advantage from an experimental point of view of being able, you can administer them and see the acute effects quite quickly. And so a neuroscientist would like something like that, that you can quickly observe what's happening.
Melinda: And study it.
Brad: It's a little bit more difficult for a person who's studied mindfulness or meditation for decades. There's hard to do a sort-of before and after comparison.
Melinda: True, true.
Brad: But, you know, I'm certainly, having talked to enough people who are serious meditators, I'm confident that the states are very similar.
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Brad: So, yeah. So again, I guess just to repeat myself a little bit, I mean, again, psychedelics seem to flatten the landscape and make them, as you said, their ability to make associations somewhat easier. Because the valleys are more shallow. So we can look from place to place and see connections that might not otherwise be there.
Melinda: And so, in terms of creativity and art making, you know, where / what does that potentially afford or, you know, a state like that, a flattened landscape, if you will?
Brad: Yes. Well, I can speak from personal experience, as well as what I've read from other anecdotes. I don't know of any data on the subject, but I do think that for myself, psychedelics can make a kind of flow state more likely. One in which the kind of it feels, the naturalness of the activity seems easier to get into.
The inhibitions about picking up the paintbrush, or working with paint again. You don't have nearly the same, I don't know, remonstrations about it. Like, oh, you've got to go make dinner or the kids are going to need a ride somewhere. Just that flow state comes much more easily. The cares of the outside world can drop away, and you can sort of get into a mind state in which, really highly focused but also extremely freely associative.
Melinda: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I know it's a vast over simplification, but sometimes we talk about sort of left brain right brain processes, right, and the right brain being that more kind of flowy, associative, divergent, you know, way. And then and then we've got our sort of like executive functioning mind that's always telling us like, you need to be doing this, this and this, and the to do list and all that, you know, and that, that somehow if we can like kind of take that off line a little bit, you know, that more linear, you know, got-to-get-it-done, then then we can open up more space for creative process.
And I think, you know, it doesn't require cycle psychedelics to do that, but it could take it takes quite a bit of effort, right? And that's what I, you know, talk to my clients and students about when they're wanting to cultivate their creativity. It's like, you actually have to carve out time and space for it. You have to, you know, you have to make that effort to become effortless, ironically.
But you know, because life just has a way of, you know, taking us down that got-to-get-it-done Road. And unless we intentionally, kind-of meaningfully, create space to allow ourselves to be flowing in that way, and to explore our creativity, we might never do it.
Brad: I completely agree. And I think for many people, as well as myself, the pandemic offered an opportunity, some bandwidth to say, we're going to set aside some time every day to do this. And, you know, that was necessary to begin, at least in this phase of my life. However, I think we have to remember that there are many, many, many people out there who are creative and artistic without the need for a global pandemic.
Melinda: Right.
Brad: And find the time to practice. And so what what's really interesting and curious, is what drives the creative people, those who we recognize as being artists, perhaps they do so professionally, to continue to work at their practice day in, day out. I don't have an answer to that, but I would like to have some of that, whatever it is.
Melinda: Yeah, and I suspect some of it has to do with, you know, for people who tend to have cultivated their creativity, because, again, I believe everyone has the capacity, but some of us utilize it and cultivate it more than others. And then that becomes an end unto itself, right? It becomes just as much about the process, and the enjoyment of the process, and the rewards that come along with being in that state, as it does accomplishing specific ends with it.
Brad: Yeah, I've said before, and I'll say again, that I think one thing that distinguishes the highly creative person is that they enjoy practicing.
Melinda: Yes, yes. It doesn't feel so burdensome. Like, you know, when you were young and taking piano lessons and having to practice your scales, right? And yeah, when you can find the enjoyment and the pleasure in it.
Brad: Yeah, exactly. I think what another interesting question, the one that I always come to after saying something like that, is okay, but what distinguishes someone without, say, any musical talent like myself--because I have tried to practice and I just dislike it so intensely that I can't get it done--from somebody, perhaps like yourself, who enjoys picking up the bass guitar and practicing at it?
What is it about your mind, your brain that makes practicing less onerous than it does for me? And you have to come back to the notion that it could have something to do with that, A) there could be a difference in how persistent we are, and there could also be a difference in how rewarding even the slightest achievement is, right. So combine that greater persistence with a perhaps heightened dopamine signal to success, and you've created a person who is more driven to be creative.
Melinda: Yeah. And there, you know, there could be some sort of, like, intrinsic aspects of that. But I know for me, that did change for me over time. So, as you know, I trained as a classical singer and I sang opera for a long time, and it was all about practicing, practicing, because, you know, doing the scales, doing the exercises.
And I did, you know, after so many years of that, I did start to find it onerous. And I got to a point, you know, I had realized that I actually wanted to be writing my own music, and writing my own songs, and had started doing that. But there was still this sense and maybe it was like all those years of sort-of classical voice training or something, but I would be so hesitant to go into my studio and sit down and it felt…
This is the reason: It felt more like an obligation, something I should do, than something that I wanted to do. And it was actually when I started doing more meditation and mindfulness, and I discovered contemplative arts practice, which is basically creativity rooted in mindfulness, that I rediscovered the joy of the creative process, and just the pleasure in it. And again, that idea of creativity being an end unto itself and just permission to play, permission to have fun without being so goal driven or goal directed. And that's really what changed it for me and allowed me to, you know, really find the pleasure in it.
Yeah, so it's not like we're doomed, you know, like we can always, I think we can all find that. But, but a lot of it does have to do with what is our mindset going into it. You know, Is it that “I'm going to go create something,” or, you know, “I've got this goal,” (and it's great to have a goal). Like if you want to get things done, you've got to have some goals. And, but also just that, you know, kind of giving oneself permission to play in that way.
Brad: Yes, I love that. I'm reminded of the word “curiosity.” In the sense of allowing oneself to be curious about what it is you're doing, and to look for that which is surprising or unpredictable in your art. And so I as you know, I began also during the pandemic, some acrylic pouring. Art for untalented people, because it's so easy. But there is a kind of I don't know. It's so fascinating. It and I have to say, sometimes I was in an altered state of mind when I would do this.
Melinda: And the images that I've seen of your, of that work, are really beautiful, by the way. Really stunning.
Brad: Yeah, I think so too; I was surprised myself at what I could produce. And I've begun selling the art occasionally, and it's often what I've done, and I think this resonates with my background in microscopy, because using a powerful lens on my 35 millimeter camera can zoom in to these translucent, like cellular-like things. What looks like it could be a microscope slide.
Melinda: Definitely. And that's fascinating, just from you know, from an artistic standpoint, it's like we could stand back and take a photograph of the whole thing. When you do an acrylic pour and all the paint mixes together and makes interesting patterns and you take a sort of macro level [image], but then if you start to zoom in and get really, really close in on the details, then it becomes something else entirely.
Brad: Yes, exactly.
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah.
So I don't know where that fits into this sort of theme of predictability and chaos that we've been talking about. Certainly, acrylic pours have a chaotic quality to them, and I think personally, I've always leaned more in the direction of unpredictability and chaos in terms of my aesthetic sense. And so maybe it's resonant in that way as well. I don't know.
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Well, I'm curious, you know, to hear a little bit more about the work that you're doing currently with the NIH and perhaps, you know, where do you find creativity in overseeing this body of research that you work with?
Brad: Sure. Well, thanks for asking. It's a real privilege to do this. I oversee a portfolio of, it must be hundreds of millions of dollars, Melinda. And so it's a lot of responsibility. I wish I could say that there is a good balance between creativity and bureaucracy, but it really, really is much more in the bureaucratic side. However, that being said, I think there's a couple of ways in which one can be creative.
Now, I was a bench scientist for like 20-odd years, and I should say free your audience's benefit, that scientists who work in the lab, as I did, employ creativity all the time.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Brad: And creativity is essential to being a good scientist. The difference between a scientist in the lab, and a person with his acrylic paint in his canvas, is that nature provides the constraints. Nature is the four corners of the canvas in which you must work. And so there is much less freedom to play, right?
Melinda: But you have to have curiosity. You have to be inquisitive. You know, you have to ask questions about how things work and…
Brad: Absolutely, absolutely. And only with the creative, associative mind can you make connections between things and reveal, or ask the kinds of questions that can reveal, something new about the brain or about nature? So I would like to dispel any notion that scientists are uncreative. They have to be creative.
Melinda: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Brad: So now, in terms of the work that I do overseeing research, a lot of it takes care of itself, right? So people come to me with their ideas, and I am usually the one who says yes, no, yes, no, yes, no.
Melinda: Right. [Laughter]
Brad: In a very sort-of macroscopic, simplified sense. But what I can do is say, I think that we need more people in this country researching this question.
Melinda: Yeah, right.
Brad: So I can see a public health need for more information about something, and in a kind-of entrepreneurial way, you know, shake the tin can amongst my colleagues, who hold all the money, and say, look, we need an investment in this particular question. And so one question that I think is really important has to do with what I would call the maternal transmission of obesity.
And so what that means is that it's very well known that women who are overweight when they're pregnant, their offspring have a much higher chance of developing obesity themselves, almost being equal, than the same woman who wasn't obese when she was pregnant. So you can put aside, or in a sense hold constant, the genetic variation that is at work. And just ask if the mom is pregnant, the offspring will be much more likely to have problems herself.
So there are some clues that these, that, let's call it the maternal milieu, the uterine environment, influences the brain of the offspring, so that she is more likely to develop obesity. And identifying what those signals are, that come from the mother, and how the brain reacts them is the focus of my work right now.
Melinda: Interesting. Yeah. So the creativity for you, again there is sort of identifying what is a gap in the research or in the knowledge. And you know what would be helpful and important from public health perspective, and then directing the, you know, the funding and the resources toward that problem.
Brad: Couldn't have said it better myself.
Melinda: Yeah, that's really, really fascinating. Great. Are there other, kind-of, research topics that are at the forefront for you right now?
Brad: I can share one more, which is: I know, I'm sure you and your audience all familiar with these drugs that are coming out like Ozempic, right. We've seen ads for them. There's hundreds of millions of prescriptions being written for drugs like Ozempic. And their efficacy is really a godsend for severe obesity and Type 2 Diabetes, because they really do help people lose weight. Yeah, but we really don't understand how they work.
Melinda: Right. It's still a very new thing, yeah.
Brad: Very new thing. And you know, there are some clues. We know that they act on the brain as well as the digestive system. But exactly how they work is not well understood. What I find particularly interesting is what are called off-target effects. Right. So, an ideal drug in an ideal world would be one in which it only addresses the problem at hand and does nothing else.
But Ozempic, and other drugs like it, have all kinds of other very interesting effects. They seem to affect, for example, all kinds consummatory behavior, not just eating. Right. So I know someone who's using it to help his alcoholism.
Melinda: Interesting.
Brad: Right. I know someone who, well, I've read an anecdote of someone who had been sort of a compulsive shopper. And she stopped buying so much stuff on Amazon when she began taking it. That's for an unrelated condition.
Melinda: Yeah, sure.
Brad: Right. So there's some clues there that drugs like Ozempic are acting in places in the brain that have much less intuitively to do with appetite and satiety. And maybe more to do with sort of general consumption in a very broad sense.
Melinda: Yes.Yeah. That is really fascinating.
Brad: Yeah. Trying to understand what's going on here is also an important puzzle. So many for that, too.
Melinda: Absolutely. Well, that is some research I would be interested in reading about, so.
Brad: Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, there's folks doing stuff on these questions, but I don't think there's enough. The Venn diagram that, in which these two things that I spoke about overlap, is the question of could we use these drugs to interrupt the transmission of obesity from the mother to the offspring?
Melinda: Yeah, sure.
Brad: And so we're currently looking at whether these drugs are safe. Most important question, of course. Is the fetus affected by them, and if so, how? And so those are those are another question that we're looking at.
Melinda: That's great. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, I'm just noticing that we are getting toward the end of our time, and I just want to kind of throw it open. Anything in this conversation, in this topic, that we haven't touched on yet that that you want to note?
Brad: Yeah, I would like to share something that I read about creativity in the brain, which I thought was really cool. So do you remember how we spoke about top-down and bottom-up processing?
Melinda: Yes.
Brad: And one might ask the question like, well, creativity is not just a sort-of momentary event. It's as if a person has a wellspring of newness and novelty coming from them at all times. The Ornette Coleman on his saxophone, or Melinda on her bass, or Brad with his canvases. Where does that generative quality come from?
And I read a paper in preparation for this that suggested that the brain operates, perhaps something like natural selection with creativity, that there is a sort of creativity engine that can operate at more or less levels of intensity in people. But then there must also be a selection agent, that picks and chooses which elements to bring forward into expression. And that the process of being creative, therefore, is not just generation, but also selection.
And that's where the top-down processing can be important. So I think you alluded to it. It's a blending, or a balance, of both bottom-up and top-down. And I think great artists are the ones who know just how to place that vertical line in such a way that it seems both predictable and unpredictable from the sequence that preceded it.
Melinda: Yes. And just, you know, at what point is it most interesting or catches the eye the most? But, you know, to this kind of top-down, bottom-up, you know, I think it speaks to the, you know, our model of the creative process that we talk about in the Syncreate book, which is Play, Plan, Produce. Which, you know, involves elements of both that divergent and convergent thinking.
And kind of looping back to where we were earlier, of kind-of making time and space so we can use our top-down, our sort of meta-cognitive awareness, to think about, you know, what is our creative process? When are the times that we feel most creative? What are the places and spaces that we feel most creative? So that we can sort-of create the conditions for ourselves to support and stimulate our creativity? So it's not just random chance, right? So like either I have a creative inspiration or I don't, you know, but we can really create the conditions for ourselves to support our creativity.
Brad: Exactly. Exactly. And that's, you know, setting aside time to practice. Yeah, it's just one way to do it.
Melinda: Yeah. Exactly. So I usually end each episode with a Creativity Pro-Tip. And so this is I think, perfect for that, you know, to this topic of really, you know, whether you are involved in psychedelics or not, or mindfulness, or whatever it might be. But you know, really thinking about when are those times that you feel creative, and taking the time and space to kind-of, intentionally cultivate the creativity. Put aside the to do list. Set aside time to get out your paints, or get out your instruments, or if you feel inspired in nature, you know, go do those things and create the conditions to, you know, nurture your creativity and then observe. Notice what happens. Be a scientist about it, you know, understand your own process. Be curious. I think, you know, it's said that in the contemplative arts teachings, that that curiosity is sort of the seed symbol of creativity.
Brad: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think curiosity is important. Just not to belabor the point, but because it helps us identify that which is unexpected.
Melinda: Yes. And that's that element of creativity. It's like we’re making these connections, we're doing something that's unexpected. We're breaking the pattern in some way.
Brad: Yes.
Melinda: Yeah. Love that. Well, thank you so much, Brad, for being with us today. Love the conversation. We've touched on a lot of different elements.
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And we're recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, with Brad in Georgia. Thank you so much for being with us. And the podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.