Creative thinking in humans and artificial intelligence: A comparative review of neural, molecular, and social mechanisms.

Creative thinking drives the generation of novel and useful ideas, contributing to scientific progress and the resolution of social challenges. Evidence from the earliest stone tools, dating to approximately 3.3 million years ago, suggests that creativity among hominin ancestors played a key role in the emergence of human culture and civilization. Although creativity arises from brain activity, the underlying molecular mechanisms and neural substrates remain incompletely understood. Neurotransmitters involved in motivation, reward, and mood play crucial roles in promoting creative processes. Recent advances in high-resolution brain imaging have begun to identify both specific brain regions and large-scale neural networks associated with creative thinking. Meanwhile, rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI) raise questions about whether machines can exhibit forms of creativity once considered uniquely human. The integration of large language models, multimodal learning, and next-generation computing technologies, including quantum computing, may substantially expand the capabilities of AI systems. Simultaneously, these technological advances are generating new insights and discussions about the characteristics and limitations of human intellectual activity, thereby underscoring the importance of creativity. This review synthesizes current knowledge on the molecular, neural, and social dimensions of creative thinking, compares the underlying characteristics of human and artificial creativity, and discusses how interactions between biological and AI may shape the future of creativity in the era of human-AI coexistence.