In my post on Tuesday - I promised to blog on the creative thought process later in the week. I had been reading of a study published in September of 2003 by Psychologists at the University of Toronto and Harvard University, so this is of course not new material... simply new to me.
According to the published report, the researchers evidently identified at least one of the biological bases of creativity. It finds that the brains of creative people seem to be more open to incoming stimuli from surrounding environment while other people might shut out this same information by what is called "latent inhibition." That process was defined as an animal's unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown to be irrelevant to its needs. Through testing, it was found that creative people seemed to have low levels of latent inhabitation and left them in contact with extra information constantly streaming from their environment. Jordan Peterson a professor at the University of Toronto explained, "The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though the object is much more complex and interesting the he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities."
Tests administered to Harvard undergraduate students classified as eminent creative achievers with a single area of creative achievement were found to be seven times more likely to have low latent inhabitation scores.
So low levels of latent inhabitation are a good thing? The report suggests that with high intellectual functioning and good working memory it may be a positive thing. The capacity to think about many things at once is good if it can be achieved - but negative otherwise. Professor Patterson put it this way- "If you are open to new information, new ideas, you better be able to intelligently and carefully edit and choose. If you have 50 ideas, only two or three are likely to be good. You have to discriminate or you'll get swamped."
That swamped description that Patterson described is something that I can associate with. I'm sure everyone feels swamped at times. I believe doing so is specifically a denotation of ADD or AD/HD. However, it seems that many of the times that I feel "swamped" there seem to be an abundance of external stimuli. So, from a very personal perspective, I can identify with the aspects of this study.
At the moment I am not on any medication for ADD treatment - though I have previously had limited experience with two medications and I am reassessing medication options. While creativity as it relates to my writing is only a portion of my life, I do think about the impact of medication on my creative thought process. I also have to think about the impact of medication or non-medication on the other aspects of my life, such as family, work, etc.
creativity mental health writing
Source:
Biological basis for creativity linked to mental illness.
2 comments:
This is interesting. I wonder if it is something that can be cultivated; I like to think everyone has creative potential.
I don't have ADD, but I do sometimes feel "swamped" by scattered thinking caused by a rush of ideas. I write out lists to try to get them out of my head; then I can more easily do the judicious choosing as indicated by the study.
I really think this research has opened up a whole new way of thinking about creativity. I'm especially interested in how we can use this research to pursue heightened creativity. I like how the article mentions that corticosterone lowers latent inhibition. For example, white noise, caffeine, alcohol, cold water, and many forms of stress increase corticosterone, and would presumably lower LI. It seems like experimenting with combinations of these could provide one way to personally test out these ideas. Increased dopamine neurotransmission likewise lowers LI, as has been found in several studies which tested latent inhibition when d-ampetamine was given to humans. As expected, the dopaminergic effect of amphetamine significantly lowered LI. Alcohol and all drugs of abuse have dopaminergic effects, which might help explain the longstanding association between creative individuals and drug abuse. The question is, how can we increase dopamine in a more sustainable way? In my experience I have found two common natural supplements to be useful: NADH (which increases dopamine via the enzyme tyrosine hydroxylase) as well as SAM-e (typically used as an antidepressant, but it has also been found to effectively re-sensitize the dopamine-rich nucleus accumbens, which may ultimately contribute to a dopaminergic effect). I discuss latent inhibition and creativity extensively at my website, http://creativesubstances.com.
Most importantly perhaps is that this research provides a way to conceptualize the optimum creative mind-state: a detached, diffuse state of mind in which a multitude of associations are combined and recombined to generate novel solutions. When I think back to some creative breakthroughs I've had as a creative writer, what stands out are stretches often lasting hours of struggling to find a solution. My mind seems almost blank, as if everything is happening subsurface. The actual breakthrough usually comes either late at night in bed or shortly after waking up in the morning. Fresh solutions or directions abruptly come to mind, and from that first solution innumerable further directions and ideas spiral out with a euphoria-producing ease.
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