Human reasoning and creativity represent perhaps the two highest evolutionary reaches of cognition. These two capacities are distinct from each other, but research on creativity in analogical ...reasoning has identified a point of convergence between them at one of the farthest forward and most recently evolved reaches of the brain. Analogy is a form of relational cognition because analogies form connections that relate otherwise separate concepts. Quantitative tools for measuring the semantic distance between concepts have advanced the measurement of creativity in relational cognition (more creative relational cognition forms connections across greater semantic distance). These tools are especially useful for the emerging neuroscience of creativity. I describe this semantic-distance approach and how it is being leveraged in my laboratory and elsewhere to investigate not only differences in creative ability between individuals but also creativity as a dynamic state that varies across time within an individual.
The cities of the Indus civilization were expansive and planned with large-scale architecture and sophisticated Bronze Age technologies. Despite these hallmarks of social complexity, the Indus lacks ...clear evidence for elaborate tombs, individual-aggrandizing monuments, large temples, and palaces. Its first excavators suggested that the Indus civilization was far more egalitarian than other early complex societies, and after nearly a century of investigation, clear evidence for a ruling class of managerial elites has yet to materialize. The conspicuous lack of political and economic inequality noted by Mohenjo-daro’s initial excavators was basically correct. This is not because the Indus civilization was not a complex society, rather, it is because there are common assumptions about distributions of wealth, hierarchies of power, specialization, and urbanism in the past that are simply incorrect. The Indus civilization reveals that a ruling class is not a prerequisite for social complexity.
Humans have an impressive ability to augment their creative state (i.e., to consciously try and succeed at thinking more creatively). Though this "thinking cap" phenomenon is commonly experienced, ...the range of its potential has not been fully explored by creativity research, which has often focused instead on creativity as a trait. A key question concerns the extent to which conscious augmentation of state creativity can improve creative reasoning. Although artistic creativity is also of great interest, it is creative reasoning that frequently leads to innovative advances in science and industry. Here, we studied state creativity in analogical reasoning, a form of relational reasoning that spans the conceptual divide between intelligence and creativity and is a core mechanism for creative innovation. Participants performed a novel Analogy Finding Task paradigm in which they sought valid analogical connections in a matrix of word-pairs. An explicit creativity cue elicited formation of substantially more creative analogical connections (measured via latent semantic analysis). Critically, the increase in creative analogy formation was not due to a generally more liberal criterion for analogy formation (that is, it appeared to reflect "real" creativity rather than divergence at the expense of appropriateness). The use of an online sample provided evidence that state creativity augmentation can be successfully elicited by remote cuing in an online environment. Analysis of an intelligence measure provided preliminary indication that the influential "threshold hypothesis," which has been proposed to characterize the relationship between intelligence and trait creativity, may be extensible to the new domain of state creativity.
Improvements in pediatric cancer survival are attributed to cooperative clinical trials. Under-representation of specific demographic groups has been described in adult and pediatric cancer trials ...and poses a threat to the generalizability of results. An evaluation of data provided by the Children's Oncology Group (COG) of upfront trial enrollment for US patients 0 to 29 years old between 2004 and 2015 was performed.
US cancer cases were estimated using incidence data and US population estimates from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program and compared to observed COG cases. Percent enrollment and standardized ratios of enrollment were calculated across demographic, disease, and socioeconomic groups. The COG website was utilized to quantify available trials and assess age eligibility.
19.9% of estimated US cancer patients age 0 to 19 years enrolled on COG trials. Younger patients were more represented across diseases and races/ethnicities. Patients with hematologic malignancies were more represented compared to solid and central nervous system (CNS) tumors.
COG trial enrollment rates are declining when compared to previously published data, potentially from challenges in pediatric drug development, difficulty designing feasible trials for highly curable diagnoses, and issues ensuring trial availability for the heterogeneous group of solid and CNS tumors. Though racial/ethnic groups and county-level socioeconomic factors were proportionally represented, under representation of the adolescent/young adult (AYA) population and younger patients with solid and CNS tumors remains a concern. Targeted efforts should focus on these subgroups and further research should evaluate AYA enrollment rates across all available trials.
Preventing uncontrolled gene expression is a powerful therapeutic strategy for the treatment of cancers. In this issue of Cell Chemical Biology, Xu et al. (2022) describe a series of proteolysis ...targeting chimeras that induce the degradation of NSD3 and suppress cMyc-related oncogene transcription in a model of acute myeloid leukemia.
Preventing uncontrolled gene expression is a powerful therapeutic strategy for the treatment of cancers. In this issue of Cell Chemical Biology, Xu et al. (2022) describe a series of proteolysis targeting chimeras that induce the degradation of NSD3 and suppress cMyc-related oncogene transcription in a model of acute myeloid leukemia.
An achiral, bent-core mesogen forms several tilted smectic liquid crystal phases, including a nonpolar, achiral de Vries smectic A which transitions to a chiral, ferroelectric state in applied ...electric fields above a threshold. At lower temperature, a chiral, ferrielectric phase with a periodic, supermolecular modulation of the tilt azimuth, indicated by a Bragg peak in carbon-edge resonant soft x-ray scattering, is observed. The absence of a corresponding resonant umklapp peak identifies the superlayer structure as a twist-bend-like helix that is only weakly modulated by the smectic layering.
Creative cognition is frequently described as involving two primary processes, idea generation and idea selection. A growing body of research has used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) ...to examine the neural mechanisms implicated in each of these processes. This literature has yielded a diverse set of findings that vary depending on the location and type (anodal, cathodal, or both) of electrical stimulation employed, as well as the task's reliance on idea generation or idea selection. As a result, understanding the interactions between stimulation site, polarity and task demands is required to evaluate the potential of tDCS to enhance creative performance. Here, we review tDCS designs that have elicited reliable and dissociable enhancements for creative cognition. Cathodal stimulation over the left inferior frontotemporal cortex has been associated with improvements on tasks that rely primarily on idea generation, whereas anodal tDCS over left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and frontopolar cortex has been shown to augment performance on tasks that impose high demands on creative idea selection. These results highlight the functional selectivity of tDCS for different components of creative thinking and confirm the dissociable contributions of left dorsal and inferior lateral frontotemporal cortex for different creativity tasks. We discuss promising avenues for future research that can advance our understanding of the effectiveness of tDCS as a method to enhance creative cognition.
Pediatric high‐grade gliomas (pHGG) comprise a deadly, heterogenous category of pediatric gliomas with a clear need for more effective treatment options. Advances in high‐throughput molecular ...techniques have enhanced molecular understanding of these tumors, but outcomes are still poor, and treatments beyond resection and radiation have not yet been clearly established as standard of care. In this review, we first discuss the history of treatment approaches to pHGG to this point. We then review four distinct categories of pHGG, including histone 3‐mutant, IDH‐mutant, histone 3/IDH‐wildtype, and radiation‐induced pHGG. We discuss the molecular understanding of each subgroup and targeted treatment options in development. Finally, we look at the development and current status of two novel approaches to pHGG as a whole: localized convection‐enhanced chemotherapy delivery and immunotherapy, including checkpoint inhibitors, vaccine therapy, and CAR‐T cells. Through this review, we demonstrate the potential for rational, molecularly driven, subtype‐specific therapy to be used with other novel approaches in combinations that could meaningfully improve the prognosis in pHGG.
Pediatric high‐grade gliomas are aggressive, deadly tumors with limited treatment options. Recent greater molecular understanding of these tumors has created opportunities for targeted, combinatorial therapies capable of making a meaningful impact on survival. Here, we review the current understanding of pediatric high‐grade glioma molecular subtypes, progress in targeted treatment, and novel therapeutic modalities, including immunotherapy and convection‐enhanced delivery of chemotherapy. We discuss how combining existing and novel treatments could significantly improve outcomes for these patients.
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