14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers noticed some time ago that creativity tended to appear in the same people who exhibited symptoms associated with mental disorders. Among the most common disease creative people had was schizophrenia. Neuroscientists have been trying to determine how the two are connected ever since, and a new study shows some light on these correlations. Experts now believe that, in both instances, the human brain reacts differently to chemicals such as dopamine, which have been associated with feeling good and satisfaction in previous research, LiveScience reports.
“Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box,” explains Fredrik Ullen, a researcher on the new study based at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. The specialists discovered a great deal of similarities between the brains of healthy, highly creative people and those of patients suffering from conditions such as schizophrenia. It may be that these patterns of cortical activity are what allow artists and creative individuals to make new connections between existing idea, and come up with new, innovative ones all on their own.
It was additionally found that, in both instances, patients and creative individuals had lower concentrations of D2 dopamine receptors in an area of the brain called the thalamus. “Schizophrenics are also known to have low D2 density in this part of the brain, suggesting a cause of the link between mental illness and creativity. Fewer D2 receptors in the thalamus probably means a lower degree of signal filtering, and thus a higher flow of information from the thalamus,” the scientist adds. The study makes more sense when considering that dopamine is the neurotransmitter that evokes the sensation of pleasure that appears following a wide array of activities, ranging from eating chocolate to using heroine.
In a new paper, published in the May 17 online issue of the open-access scientific journal PLoS ONE, the researchers describe the experiments that led them to this conclusion. They worked with 14 test participants, none of which had any history of mental illnesses. As the KI team applied tests to these individuals, it became apparent that those who were labeled as being highly-creative had the same method of making new connections between ideas as people who were mentally-ill. Ullen's analogy to a loose box now makes even more sense.