How the brain supports the emergence of creative ideas has long been considered one of the most enigmatic phenomena in cognitive neuroscience. Over the past few decades, neuroscientific studies have identified a distributed pattern of brain activation when individuals engage in creative thinking. Exploration of these brain signals led to the understanding that several large-scale brain networks, each with their unique functional profile, contribute to creativity. Of these, the default mode network (DMN) has emerged as one of the most relevant players.

The DMN is a system of multimodal brain regions that tend to activate together as a functional unit (see Ref. [1] for an overview). Broadly, this network drives spontaneous cognition — any thought that does not constitute a direct response to external cues — as illustrated by increased DMN engagement during mind wandering [2], and decreased activity during perceptual [3] and working memory tasks [4]. Spontaneous thinking is now understood to be relevant for performance across tasks involving complex cognition detached from the environment, as spontaneous thoughts will often contribute to current goals [5].

Creativity is one such form of higher-order, complex cognition that engages spontaneous thinking through many functionally distinct lower-order processes, such as cognitive control, memory, and attention 6, 7. Cognitive neuroscience operationalizes creativity as the cognitive process that underpins the generation of original and effective ideas [8].

Although decades of research have explored the function of the DMN, its role in creative cognition remains unclear. In this article, we outline key recent findings linking DMN and creativity (Table 1). We summarize established research and proceed to highlight four novel trends that stand out as promising avenues for future work on the DMN’s: (1) causal linking with creative abilities, (2) role in driving associative processes, (3) contribution to creative idea evaluation, and (4) capacity to functionally integrate diverse information from distant brain regions.