Madness and creativity have been associated for thousands of years. But
is it fact or illusion? Our own work indicates that about80% of schizophrenic
patients have cognitive deficits but the other 20% do
not and these 20% almost always are exceptionally creative.
Creativity is a very
diffuse concept so it is notoriously difficult to study So
we need to limit and constrain our scope and goal. We make no attempt to link
with psychoanalytic models. Instead we focus on cognitive neuropsychological
factors and we limit ourselves to psychosis (bipolar disorder and
schizophrenia) and psychosis-proneness. We aim to go beyond surveys and
interviews of eminent people to directly study the link between creativity and
madness and specify underlying mechanisms that are common to both creative and
ÒcrazyÓ thought process.
Our
research suggests that there are 4 key factors that contribute to creativity:
psychosis-proneness, reduced laterality, disinhibited
attention and good working memory. This profile is most common among the
relatives of psychosis patients and schizotypal
individuals. In schizotypal and schizophrenic
subjects, we have examined divergent thinking ability and assessed brain
activity during divergent thinking. We found that verbal creativity is
increased in healthy schizotypal individuals and this
was associated with increased right frontal activation (Folley
and Park, 2005). Creative output interacts with mood in bipolar disorder. In a
study of bipolar subjects and their first degree relatives, we observed that
after intense mood induction, there was an increased use of unusual language in
the relatives (McMichael and Park, in preparation).
We
need to further elucidate the neural mechanisms of creative thinking process
and characterize individual differences to test the hypothesis that those at
genetic risk for psychosis may have cognitive advantages. We are currently
using near infrared optical imaging and DTI as well as behavioral tasks to
understand the creativity-madness link.