Although the function of the hippocampus and adjacent medial temporal lobe (MTL) areas in forming associations is generally recognized, how MTL contributes to form creative associations that could result in novel and appropriate functions or meanings remains unclear. In this study, we compared highly creative combinations (HCCs) of two objects (e.g., that of “lifejacket” and “distress signal device”) that resulted in genuine innovative designs comprising additionally unprecedented functions (the “1 + 1 > 2” effects) with the lowly creative combinations (LCCs, e.g., the combination of “set‐top box” and “jewelry box”) that resulted in nothing more than simple “1 + 1 = 2” effects. The event‐related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study found that during the “early binding phase,” when the combinations of the two objects were initially encoded, the right parahippocampus was more intensively activated during the encoding of HCC relative to LCC trials. However, during the “late integration phase,” when participants finally formed a holistic mental representation of new products based on the two‐object combinations, both HCCs and LCCs were found to be associated with significantly increased hippocampal and parahippocampal activation relative to the baseline condition, but at a similar level. In this “late integration phase,” the functional areas appeared to be more intensively activated in HCCs relative to LCCs located in the posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), the area known to mediate category‐related processing. Consistently, our supplementary behavioral study found that, relative to LCCs, HCCs had a higher possibility of resulting in some new conceptual expansions that differed from each of the original two objects that constituted the combinations. These findings indicate that the formation of creative combinations not only require MTL‐based novel association‐formation, but also pMTG‐based novel concept‐expansion.

中文翻译：

---

内侧颞叶和颞中后回在形成创造性联想中的作用。

尽管海马体和邻近的内侧颞叶 (MTL) 区域在形成关联中的功能得到普遍认可，但 MTL 如何有助于形成可能导致新颖和适当功能或意义的创造性关联仍不清楚。在这项研究中，我们比较了两个物体（例如“救生衣”和“遇险信号装置”）的高度创造性组合（HCC），这些组合产生了真正的创新设计，包括额外的前所未有的功能（“1 + 1 > 2”效果） ) 与低创意组合（LCC，例如，“机顶盒”和“珠宝盒”的组合）产生的只是简单的“1 + 1 = 2”效果。事件相关功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 研究发现，在“早期结合阶段，”当两个对象的组合最初被编码时，相对于 LCC 试验，在 HCC 的编码过程中，右侧海马体被更强烈地激活。然而，在“后期整合阶段”，当参与者最终基于双客体组合形成新产品的整体心理表征时，发现 HCC 和 LCC 都与相对于基线条件显着增加的海马和海马旁激活有关，但处于相似的水平。在这个“晚期整合阶段”，相对于位于颞中后后回 (pMTG) 的 LCC，HCC 中的功能区域似乎更强烈地激活，pMTG 是已知的介导类别相关处理的区域。一致地，我们的补充行为研究发现，相对于 LCC，HCC 更有可能导致一些新的概念扩展，这些扩展不同于构成组合的原始两个对象中的每一个。这些发现表明，创造性组合的形成不仅需要基于 MTL 的新关联形成，还需要基于 pMTG 的新概念扩展。