Creative Mind Network Simulator

Creative Mind Network

Idea fluency 1.6 /s

DMN↔ECN connectivity 0.35

Challenge 1.0

Skill 1.0

Ideas generated

Converged (output)

Flow state

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How it works

Idea-particles spawn inside the violet Default Mode Network cloud (mind-wandering, distant associations) and drift toward the cyan Salience Network gate at centre, which switches attention between generating and evaluating. Whether an idea then crosses into the amber, lattice-structured Executive Control Network — becoming a converged, "verified" idea — depends on how strongly the two networks are coupled and on the current flow state.

flow = 1 − clamp(|ln(challenge/skill)| / ln 3, 0, 1)
P(cross) = clamp(sync · (0.55 + 0.75·flow), 0, 1)
speed = base · (0.6 + 0.4·flow)

Idea fluency — divergent-thinking generation rate, as in the Alternate Uses Task (Guilford, 1967): how many candidate ideas the DMN throws off per second.
DMN↔ECN connectivity — models Beaty et al. (2016, PNAS): resting-state functional connectivity between these networks correlated with TTCT creativity scores at r ≈ 0.33. Higher sync lets more divergent ideas survive evaluation instead of being rejected (grey, fading).
Challenge / Skill — Csikszentmihalyi's flow (1975): when challenge ≈ skill the system enters flow — transient hypofrontality (Dietrich, 2004) lowers DLPFC "censorship", so ideas travel faster and straighter. A large mismatch either way (anxiety if challenge≫skill, boredom if skill≫challenge) adds turbulence and slows convergence.
Reset counters — zero the running fluency/output tallies without disturbing the sliders.

Real-world relevance: this loop mirrors the "dual-process" account of creativity — free generation (divergent) coupled to selective evaluation (convergent) — that design methods like IDEO's Ideate→Prototype cycle deliberately exploit.

DMN — generation SN — switch/gate ECN — evaluation Converged idea

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