Grant Recipients

The Imagination Institute, based at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, has announced the recipients of nearly $3 million worth of grants to researchers at 16 institutions. These grants are aimed at the development of better ways of assessing and promoting imagination and creativity.

Cognitive

Development

Assessing & Fostering Visual Imagination through Drawing

Brooklyn College Visual imagination involves the ability to generate, manipulate, and transform images mentally, and requires going beyond the information given to the senses. This kind of ability is prized in STEM fields (architecture, engineering, physics, surgery)...

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Education

Language

Creativity & the Quantification of Free Thought

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill We will quantify the imaginative creativity inherent in free thought by using sophisticated semantic analysis metrics.  We expect that these metrics will predict real-world creativity, will allow simple creativity-improving...

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Measurement & Development of Narrative Imagination (NI)

Pace University & Yale University; University Paris Descartes The goal of this project is twofold: 1) to develop a tablet-based measure of imagination that captures multiple facets of this ability (e.g., resources involved in evoking the past, anticipating the...

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Neuro

The Neurological Correlates of Creativity in Geniuses

Thomas Jefferson University & Hospital The goal of this study is to use magnetic resonance imaging to determine the anatomical correlates related to creative thinking in a group of masters/geniuses compared to normal controls. We also hope to determine how...

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Measuring Imagination with Functional Network Connectivity

University of North Carolina, Greensboro How does the brain come up with creative ideas? This project examine how two different brain networks influence creativity. One network—the default mode network—is associated with spontaneous, imaginative thought. The other—the...

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Personality

Introducing imQ: Assessing & Improving Imagination

Goldsmiths University of London, UK Imagination is key to psychological development, but measures of imagination are scarce and little is known about the construct itself. Our research will overcome these issues: first, we will develop a new test battery to assess...

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