ANNA ABRAHAM - Author of “The Neuroscience of Creativity” - Director of Torrance Center for Creativity & Talent Development

Anna Abraham, Ph.D. is the E. Paul Torrance Professor and Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia (USA). She investigates the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying creativity and other aspects of the human imagination, including the reality-fiction distinction, mental time travel, social and self-referential cognition, and mental state reasoning. She is the author of the 2018 book, The Neuroscience of Creativity (Cambridge University Press) and the editor of the multidisciplinary volume, The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination (2020).

"How do you know that you're talented at something? At some point you encountered it or you were around it and you felt the pull, the drive towards it. Some people have it very early on. And other people do not. And the question of how do you know what works for you is a very big one. And partly it has to do with the opportunities that you have, the house you grew up in, and so on. And that's not to say that those are determining factors because there are plenty of examples of people who didn't come from any sort of background of artistry and then went on to become incredible artists. And the same for the sciences.

So, how to identify it is really based on what you encounter in the world and what you're aware of, and your awareness of your own skills. But for anyone who takes to art, they just understand that when you first did it or the early encounters with it were a sort of almost spiritual phenomenon. This is also true of scientists. They feel like they're part of something larger and it's impossible to define it for any one person, but you know it when you're in it. You discover for yourself that when you're writing a diary at night, that when you twist the words a specific way, it gives you incredible joy. And then you realize that this is your own private thing, that you can do really well, and you choose to pursue it more and more. But I think one way to do it is when they're young enough to sort of expose children to as many different things as possible."

www.anna-abraham.com 

https://coe.uga.edu/directory/torrance-center 

www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/elements/elements-in-creativity-and-imagination

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