Subcortical neural basis of malevolent creativity

Malevolent creativity (MC) involves generating original ideas to harm others, and it not only relies on cognitive flexibility but may also be related to the activities of emotional and motivational brain regions known as the subcortical regions. However, the relationship between the subcortical regions and MC performance remains unclear. We calculated dynamic graph-based analyses using resting-state fMRI. We found that MC originality was negatively correlated with functional connectivity (FC) between the right nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and cortical regions such as the right medial superior frontal gyrus (mSFG) and supplementary motor area (SMA). Similarly, benevolent creative (BC) originality was negatively correlated with FC between the right NAcc and SMA/superior frontal gyrus (SFG). MC malevolence was positively correlated with FC between the left caudate and postcentral gyrus and negatively correlated with FC between the right amygdala and SFG. These findings suggest that MC is associated with a complex interaction between the subcortical and cortical regions.