Mad genius: Study suggests link between psychosis and creativity
September 28, 2009Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. Sylvia Plath stuck her head in the oven. History teems with examples of great artists acting in very peculiar ways. Were these artists simply mad or brilliant? According to new research reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, maybe both.
In order to examine the link between psychosis and creativity, psychiatrist Szabolcs Kéri of Semmelweis University in Hungary focused his research on neuregulin 1, a gene that normally plays a role in a variety of brain processes, including development and strengthening communication between neurons. However, a variant of this gene (or genotype) is associated with a greater risk of developing mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
In this study, the researchers recruited volunteers who considered themselves to be very creative and accomplished. They underwent a battery of tests, including assessments for intelligence and creativity. To measure creativity, the volunteers were asked to respond to a series of unusual questions (for example, "Just suppose clouds had strings attached to them which hang down to earth. What would happen?") and were scored based on the originality and flexibility of their answers. They also completed a questionnaire regarding their lifetime creative achievements before the researchers took blood samples.
The results show a clear link between neuregulin 1 and creativity: Volunteers with the specific variant of this gene were more likely to have higher scores on the creativity assessment and also greater lifetime creative achievements than volunteers with a different form of the gene. Kéri notes that this is the first study to show that a genetic variant associated with psychosis may have some beneficial functions.
He observes that "molecular factors that are loosely associated with severe mental disorders but are present in many healthy people may have an advantage enabling us to think more creatively." In addition, these findings suggest that certain genetic variations, even though associated with adverse health problems, may survive evolutionary selection and remain in a population's gene pool if they also have beneficial effects.
Source: Association for Psychological Science (news : web)
Mar 10, 2009 |
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Roy Stewart,
Phoenix AZ
@RobertKLR
Can you tell us why so. The genetic link is one factor in determining psychosis and there are many factors to consider when talking about mental capacity or mental illness. This is one step in understanding the genetic factor to thought formation and cognition in its broad sense. I consider people like you as comment spammers because you only criticize without explanation. If you expect people to understand what you intend to say without saying, well, we don't have telepathic genes.
I give the writer extra marks for (a) insensitivity, and (b) failing to distinguish between major depression and psychosis.
"a variant of this gene (or genotype) is associated with a greater risk of developing mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder"
The writer is not alleging that Sylvia Plath was psychotic. As evidenced in the quote above from the first paragraph, the argument is for all kinds of mental disorders, of which depression is certainly one and also part of bipolar disorder which is specifically mentioned.
http://news.bbc.c...3650.stm
We would all invest in them so that we could incorporate our housing market into them. Everyone would want a cloud of their very own. Many people would take out mortgages so that they could pay off their cloud over time. Bankers would purchase those cloud mortgages and organize them into Collateralized Debt Obligations. Investors would want a piece of the action. Eventually the brokers selling the clouds would not be able to finance the banks demand for CDOs. They would have to sell to under-privileged buyers just like Fannie Mac and Freddie Mae, and the cloud economy would sky rocket. Cash would rain down on everyone, and we would be happy (but only for a little while). Those mortgages would go bad and the cloud market would freeze. No one would want their cloud, and giants would climb down to go on killing sprees.
my answer was. "am i the only one who sees them."