{
  "id": 3784331,
  "title": "Resting Galvanic Skin Response Reflects Fluctuations in Creativity Potential for Solving Creativity Tasks",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/27/resting-galvanic-skin-response-reflects-fluctuations-in-creativity",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-27T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.23.746567v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The study investigated whether changes in autonomic physiology, specifically cardiac and electrodermal activity, during a short pre-trial resting period were linked to subsequent creative performance. Twenty-eight participants completed two tests measuring divergent and convergent creative thinking. Data from 27 participants were used in the analysis. The researchers measured heart rate, heart rate variability, tonic skin conductance level, and phasic skin conductance activity within observation windows of 11 to 30 seconds before the trial. Trial-level creativity was assessed using GPT-based ratings of novelty, feasibility, and goal attainment. Linear mixed-effects models revealed that higher pre-trial tonic skin conductance level was consistently linked to better creative performance across both tasks, with the best model fit occurring at a 21-second observation window. Feature-importance analysis supported the role of tonic skin conductance, but cardiac and phasic electrodermal indicators did not show independent associations. While the model explained a small portion of behavioral variance, the findings suggest that tonic sympathetic arousal may reflect a transient physiological state associated with creativity potential, but autonomic signals alone are not sufficient for accurate individual-level prediction.",
  "summary": "Creative performance fluctuates from moment to moment, suggesting that it depends partly on transient internal states present before creative thinking begins. Although such fluctuations have been identified in central neural activity, it remains unclear whether they are also reflected in autonomic physiology. We examined whether cardiac and electrodermal activity during a brief pre-trial resting…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}