BBC News - Creative minds 'mimic schizophrenia'

[davidfcooper]

By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News Artist Salvador Dali is known for his surreal paintings and eccentric personality

Creativity is akin to insanity, say scientists who have been studying how the mind works.

Brain scans reveal striking similarities in the thought pathways of highly creative people and those with schizophrenia.

Both groups lack important receptors used to filter and direct thought.

It could be this uninhibited processing that allows creative people to "think outside the box", say experts from Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

In some people, it leads to mental illness.

But rather than a clear division, experts suspect a continuum, with some people having psychotic traits but few negative symptoms.

Art and suffering

Some of the world's leading artists, writers and theorists have also had mental illnesses - the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and American mathematician John Nash (portrayed by Russell Crowe in the film A Beautiful Mind) to name just two.

Creativity is known to be associated with an increased risk of depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The thalamus channels thoughts

Similarly, people who have mental illness in their family have a higher chance of being creative.

Associate Professor Fredrik Ullen believes his findings could help explain why.

He looked at the brain's dopamine (D2) receptor genes which experts believe govern divergent thought.

He found highly creative people who did well on tests of divergent thought had a lower than expected density of D2 receptors in the thalamus - as do people with schizophrenia.

The thalamus serves as a relay centre, filtering information before it reaches areas of the cortex, which is responsible, amongst other things, for cognition and reasoning.

"Fewer D2 receptors in the thalamus probably means a lower degree of signal filtering, and thus a higher flow of information from the thalamus," said Professor Ullen.

Continue reading the main story

Creative people, like those with psychotic illnesses, tend to see the world differently to most. It's like looking at a shattered mirror

Mark Millard UK psychologist

He believes it is this barrage of uncensored information that ignites the creative spark.

This would explain how highly creative people manage to see unusual connections in problem-solving situations that other people miss.

Schizophrenics share this same ability to make novel associations. But in schizophrenia, it results in bizarre and disturbing thoughts.

UK psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society Mark Millard said the overlap with mental illness might explain the motivation and determination creative people share.

"Creativity is uncomfortable. It is their dissatisfaction with the present that drives them on to make changes.

"Creative people, like those with psychotic illnesses, tend to see the world differently to most. It's like looking at a shattered mirror. They see the world in a fractured way.

"There is no sense of conventional limitations and you can see this in their work. Take Salvador Dali, for example. He certainly saw the world differently and behaved in a way that some people perceived as very odd."

'TROUBLED' GENIUSES

Continue reading the main story

• Writer Virginia Woolf
• Painter Vincent van Gogh
• Painter Salvador Dali
• Painter Edvard Munch
• Composer Robert Schumann
• Mathematician John Nash
• Pianist David Helfgott

He said businesses have already recognised and capitalised on this knowledge.

Some companies have "skunk works" - secure, secret laboratories for their highly creative staff where they can freely experiment without disrupting the daily business.

Chartered psychologist Gary Fitzgibbon says an ability to "suspend disbelief" is one way of looking at creativity.

"When you suspend disbelief you are prepared to believe anything and this opens up the scope for seeing more possibilities.

"Creativity is certainly about not being constrained by rules or accepting the restrictions that society places on us. Of course the more people break the rules, the more likely they are to be perceived as 'mentally ill'."

He works as an executive coach helping people to be more creative in their problem solving behaviour and thinking styles.

"The result is typically a significant rise in their well being, so as opposed to creativity being associated with mental illness it becomes associated with good mental health."

via news.bbc.co.uk

Posted via web from davidfcooper's posterous

Comments

[doc-neuro.livejournal.com]

Interesting. especially given the links between tourette syndrome and a high incidence of giftedness and creativity. Tourette Syndrome is known to involve D2 receptors in the cortico-striato-thalamic circuit pathways mediated by the basal ganglia. In fact TS patients respond to the same D2 Receptor Blocker drugs as Schizophrenics in spite of the fact that the symptoms of the latter are primarily psychiatric and the symptoms of the former are primarily motor. the link between the basal ganglia and the thalamus where these d2 receptors are is best thought of as a relay station for a whole lot of functions. So in the origininal scientific article of which the full text is I believe available for free here http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0010670 the guy actually says more or less that thinking outside the box may be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box to begin with.

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the explanation and the link, doc_neuro.

[doc-neuro.livejournal.com]

well its something those of us in the field who deal with such conditions already know anecdotally by observation, this is just one of the more elaborate studies I've seen proving it. Part of the problem with the older ones was that nobody could agree on a standard definition of "creativity". But this guy is measuring "divergent thinking" and creative problem solving which is a far better foundation for generalized conclusions. I like it, I forwarded it to my boss and a few co-workers. They are all supporters of the theory that the correlation between TS and creativity is no accident. Hell maybe there's even a research project in it in the not too distant future (if they ever get the damn fMRI scanner fixed...funcitonal MRI is a much more reliable way of measuring D2 Receptor density).