Enhancing Divergent Thinking through Short-Pulse Inhalation of High-Concentration Oxygen

High-concentration oxygen inhalation is known to facilitate learning and attention. In this study, we tested whether a short-pulse high-concentration oxygen inhalation could enhance creativity. Thirty-four participants were assigned to either an oxygen group (n = 18) or a control group (n = 16) and completed 30 trials of the Alternative Uses Task (AUT) while 128-channel EEG was recorded. The AUT assesses divergent thinking by asking participants to generate alternative uses for everyday items, with the novelty and feasibility of their responses evaluated using an automated GPT-based method. Behavioral results showed that the oxygen group produced solutions with significantly higher novelty without compromising feasibility. Oxygen inhalation also stabilized performance by reducing trial-to-trial variability, with effects lasting at least five minutes after withdrawal. Notably, oxygen prevented the generation of low-novelty solutions while only marginally enhancing highly novel ideas. EEG analysis revealed that oxygen increased brain flexibility, indexed by a resting-state functional connectivity marker termed the Creativity Potential Network (CPN), with the enhancement particularly evident in slow theta-band oscillations. These findings provide behavioral and neural evidence that short-pulse high-concentration oxygen inhalation is a cost-effective method for facilitating creativity.