COMPARISON OF BRAIN ACTIVITIES BETWEEN HAND AND COMPUTER DRAWINGS IN FINKE'S PATTERN GENERATION TASK

Abstract

CAD (Computer Aided Design/Drawing) has become popular to be used both in industrial and engineering design areas. The drawing by CAD is superior to the hand drawing in the accuracy and ease of modifying, but is inferior in the generation of a creative idea accidentally given by the hand drawing. There are some studies to compare the two drawings, but is no one to evaluate the difference in the designers' creativity, quantitatively. This study is a preliminary stage to quantitatively differentiate them and measured of the cerebral blood flow of the sixteen participants taking the creative task (Finke's pattern generation task) employing the two drawings. The blood flow was measured using a NIRS (Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy) apparatus. The result shows that the significant difference of the qualitative assessment between the hand drawing and computer operation could not be confirmed, and the computer operation activates more channels (brain regions), especially in the right prefrontal cortex, than the hand drawing.