Functional activity and connectivity during ideation in professional product design engineers.

In product design engineering, ideation involves producing ideas for new products that fulfil functional requirements. Ideation is associated with activity in multiple regions across the brain. However, knowledge about how these regions interact is limited. In an fMRI study of professional product design engineers (n = 30), we examined neural regions activated during ideation compared with three control conditions (rest, working memory and visuospatial processing). Using Psychophysiological Interactions analysis, we identified increased functional connectivity between five regions of interest and other areas. This included functional coupling between regions of the executive control and salience networks, and the default mode and visual networks. Connectivity between the lingual gyrus and cerebellum also suggests an interplay of visual and motor imagery during ideation. • Design ideation activates the pre-frontal, visual and motor cortex. • Ideation also engages default mode regions involved in semantic/episodic memory. • Executive control and salience networks show increased connectivity during ideation. • Several networks show enhanced coupling with the visual cortex during ideation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]