Odd behavior and creativity may go hand-in-hand
September 7, 2005
A quirky or socially awkward approach to life might be the key to becoming a
great artist, composer or inventor.
New research in individuals with schizotypal personalities--people characterized
by odd behavior and language but who are not psychotic or schizophrenic--offers
the first neurological evidence that these individuals are more creative than
normal or fully schizophrenic people, and rely more heavily on the right sides
of their brains than the general population to access their creativity.
The work by Vanderbilt psychologists Brad Folley and Sohee Park was published
online Aug. 26 by the journal Schizophrenia
Research.
Psychologists believe famous creative luminaries, including Vincent Van Gogh,
Albert Einstein, Emily Dickinson and Isaac Newton, had schizotypal
personalities.
"The idea that schizotypes have enhanced creativity has been out there for
a long time but no one has investigated the behavioral manifestations and their
neural correlates experimentally," Folley said. "Our paper is unique
because we investigated the creative process experimentally and we also looked
at the blood flow in the brain while research subjects were undergoing creative
tasks."
Folley and Park conducted two experiments to compare the creative thinking
processes of schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal control subjects. In the
first experiment, the researchers showed research subjects a variety of
household objects and asked them to make up new functions for them. The results
showed that the schizotypes were better able to creatively suggest new uses for
the objects, while the schizophrenics and average subjects performed similarly
to one another.
"Thought processes for individuals with schizophrenia
are often very disorganized, almost to the point where they can't really be
creative because they cannot get all of their thoughts coherent enough to do
that," Folley said. "Schizotypes, on the other hand, are free from the
severe, debilitating symptoms surrounding schizophrenia
and also have an enhanced creative ability."
In the second experiment, the three groups again were asked to identify new uses
for everyday objects as well as to perform a basic control task while the
activity in their prefrontal lobes was monitored using a brain scanning
techniques called near-infrared optical spectroscopy. The brain scans showed
that all groups used both brain hemispheres for creative tasks, but that the
activation of the right hemispheres of the schizotypes was dramatically greater
than that of the schizophrenic and average subjects, suggesting a positive
benefit of schizotypy.
"In the scientific community, the popular idea that creativity exists in
the right side of the brain is thought to be ridiculous, because you need both
hemispheres of your brain to make novel associations and to perform other
creative tasks," Folley said. "We found that all three groups,
schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal controls, did use both hemispheres when
performing creative tasks. But the brain scans of the schizotypes showed a
hugely increased activation of the right hemisphere compared to the
schizophrenics and the normal controls."
The researchers believe that the results offer support for the idea that
schizotypes and other psychoses-prone populations draw on the left and right
sides of their brains differently than the average population, and that this
bilateral use of the brain for a variety of tasks may be related to their
enhanced creativity.
In support of this theory, Folley pointed to research by Swiss neuroscientist
Peter Brugger who found that everyday associations, such as recognizing your car
key on your keychain, and verbal abilities are controlled by the left
hemisphere, and that novel associations, such as finding a new use for a object
or navigating a new place, are controlled by the right hemisphere. Brugger
hypothesized that schizotypes are better at accessing both hemispheres for novel
associations, enabling them to make these associations faster. His theory is
supported by research showing that a disproportional number of schizotypes and
schizophrenics are neither right nor left hand dominant, but instead use both
hands for a variety of tasks, suggesting that they recruit both sides of their
brains for a variety of tasks more so than the average person.
"The lack of specialization for certain tasks in brain hemispheres could be
seen as a liability, but this increased communication between the hemispheres
actually could provide added creativity," Folley said.
Folley is in the process of completing his dissertation at Vanderbilt and is
currently pursuing a clinical internship and research at the University of
California Los Angeles. Park is an associate professor of psychology and an
investigator in the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development.
The work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health
and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
A multimedia version of this story is available at exploration.vanderbilt.edu/news/news_schizotypes.htm.
For more Vanderbilt news, visit vanderbilt.edu/news.
Melanie Moran
melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu
615-322-2706
Vanderbilt University
sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/news
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/
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