Do the brain networks of scientists account for their superiority in hypothesis-generating?

Where do scientists' superior abilities originate from when generating a creative idea? What different brain functions are activated between scientists and i) general academic high school students and ii) science high school students when generating a biological hypothesis? To reveal brain level explanations for these questions, this paper investigated neural connectivity differences between general and science high school students and biologists during hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-understanding using fMRI. Researchers designed two sets of task paradigm on biological phenomena, one for hypothesis-generating and the other for hypothesis-understanding. Thirty-six healthy participants (twelve participants per group) were given hypothesis generating and understanding tasks. Results showed strong interconnections of functional connectivity in the biologist group, which is acknowledged as possessing superior hypothesis generation skills. The group was also found to have significant functional connectivity between the frontal cortex and the mesolimbic system, which has been documented as the fronto-striatal pathway. Moreover, the biologist group recorded higher interconnections in other functional connectivities known to be associated with hypothesis-generating. Taken together, it can be concluded that the hypothesis generating skill gap between groups resulted from activation of particular regions as well as interconnections of functional connectivity related to network fluidity. Specially, the biologists' hypothesis-generating superior skill resulted from highly strengthened interconnections of functional connectivity.