19/05/2010
Dopamine, Mental Illness and Creativity
A new study by researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet supports the hypothesis that there is a link between mental illness and creativity. More specifically, they showed that highly creative people – with high scores in divergent thinking – had a lower density of D2 receptors in their thalamus than less creative people. Lower density of D2 receptors is a consistent finding in patients with schizophrenia. The authors suggest that lower density of D2 receptors may be “one factor that facilitates performance on divergent thinking tasks.”, as it could possibly:
“lower thalamic gating thresholds, resulting in decreased filtering and autoregulation of information flow and, increase excitation of cortical regions through decreased inhibition of prefrontal pyramidal neurons. The decreased prefrontal signal-to-noise ratio may place networks of cortical neurons in a more labile state, allowing them to more easily switch between representations and process multiple stimuli across a wider association range. This state, which we hereforth will refer to as the “creative bias”, could benefit performance on tasks that involve continuous generation and (re-)combination of mental representations and switching between mind-sets
.
However, decreased signal-to-noise ratio is also associated with some drawbacks (i.e. cognitive disorganization, poor performance on tasks of selective attention), some of which are linked to psychopathology. As de Manzano and colleagues conclude:
“..thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box.”
de Manzano, Örjan, Cervenka, Simon, Karabanov, Anke, Farde, Lars, & Ullén, Fredrik (2010). Thinking Outside a Less Intact Box: Thalamic Dopamine D2 Receptor Densities Are Negatively Related to Psychometric Creativity in Healthy Individuals PLoS ONE DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010670
Maria P.
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19/05/2010 at 03:28
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Vahid said,
19/05/2010 at 08:34
This is great news. Thanks for blogging it.
News Round-Up: May 2010 – 4th Edition « The Amazing World of Psychiatry: A Psychiatry Blog said,
23/05/2010 at 17:52
[...] A study finding Thalamic D2 receptor density associations with creativity is covered at Nou Stuff. [...]
Crispin Sanchez said,
01/06/2010 at 03:06
[...] A study finding Thalamic D2 receptor density associations with creativity is covered at Nou Stuff. [...]
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Forster said,
12/06/2010 at 02:21
[...] A study finding Thalamic D2 receptor density associations with creativity is covered at Nou Stuff. [...]+1
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Music and the Brain: Depression and Creativity Symposium « Nou Stuff said,
22/01/2012 at 14:43
[...] you’re following this blog, you probably know that I’m very interested in creativity. I was delighted to find this video on YouTube and decided to share it with you: Kay [...]