Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b6zl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-10T15:30:20.992Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Paradoxical creativity and adjustment in neurological conditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

By
Indre V. Viskontas  and
Bruce L. Miller
Edited by
Narinder Kapur
With
Alvaro Pascual-Leone ,
Vilayanur Ramachandran ,
Jonathan Cole ,
Sergio Della Sala ,
Tom Manly  and
Andrew Mayes
Foreword by
Oliver Sacks
Indre V. Viskontas
Affiliation:
University of California
Bruce L. Miller
Affiliation:
University of California
Narinder Kapur
Affiliation:
University College London
Alvaro Pascual-Leone
Affiliation:
Harvard Medical School
Vilayanur Ramachandran
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Jonathan Cole
Affiliation:
University of Bournemouth
Sergio Della Sala
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Tom Manly
Affiliation:
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
Andrew Mayes
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Oliver Sacks
Affiliation:
Columbia University Medical Center
Get access

Summary

Summary

In recent years, the paradoxical occurrence of creativity and related behaviours in patients with neurological conditions has begun to gain attention. Relevant examples include the emergence of previously unrecognized visual and musical creativity in the context of the neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia, and also in some cases of stroke. The description of these phenomena has helped to influence models of the neural underpinnings of creativity. Specifically, it is possible that down-regulation of frontal or anterior temporal function may enable spontaneous creative insights that originate in other regions of the brain. However, other explanations may also be tenable, and further research needs to be carried out to gauge why certain individuals and not others with neurological conditions become creative, and how this enhanced creativity may be understood in terms of specific cognitive processes and neural systems.

Introduction

Neurological conditions are inevitably accompanied by deficits, disabilities and handicaps – problems that are emphasized by the patients' loved ones, clinicians and researchers alike. In rare instances, however, neurological changes have led to observations of enhanced function, including the domain of creativity. For example, Lythgoe and colleagues described a patient who, following a subarachnoid haemorrhage, showed an all-encompassing compulsion to sculpt, draw and paint, having shown no premorbid interest in art (Lythgoe et al.,2005). Defining and measuring creativity has proven to be a monumental task, and taken together with the considerable individual differences in response to brain damage, evidence unambiguously demonstrating increased creativity is scarce.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Paradoxical Brain , pp. 221 - 233
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aharon, I., Etcoff, N., Ariely, D., Chabris, C. F., O'Connor, E., & Breiter, H. C. (2001). Beautiful faces have variable reward value: fMRI and behavioral evidence. Neuron, 32: 537–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Altarescu, G., Hill, S., Wiggs, E., et al. (2001). The efficacy of enzyme replacement therapy in patients with chronic neuronopathic Gaucher's disease. Journal of Pediatrics, 138: 539–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Amaducci, L., Grassi, E., & Boller, F. (2002). Maurice Ravel and right-hemisphere musical creativity: influence of disease on his last musical works? EuropeanJournal of Neurology, 9: 75–82.Google Scholar
Beatty, W. W., Winn, P., Adams, R. L., et al. (1994). Preserved cognitive skills in dementia of the Alzheimer type. Archives of Neurology, 51: 1040–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boden, M. A. (1998). Creativity and artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence, 103: 347–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogen, J. E., & Bogen, G. M. (1969). The other side of the brain III: the corpus callosum and creativity. Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Society, 34: 191–203.Google Scholar
Bogen, J. E., & Bogen, G. M. (1988). Creativity and the corpus callosum. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 11: 293–301.Google ScholarPubMed
Breiter, H. C., Aharon, I., Kahneman, D., Dale, A., & Shizgal, P. (2001). Functional imaging of neural responses to expectancy and experience of monetary gains and losses. Neuron, 30: 619–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bristol, A. S., & Viskontas, I. V. (2006). Dynamic processes within associative memory stores: piecing together the neural basis of creativity. In: Kaufman, J. C. & Baer, J. (Eds.). Creativity, Knowledge and Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 60–80.Google Scholar
Carlsson, I., Wendt, P. E., & Risberg, J. (2000). On the neurobiology of creativity. Differences in frontal activity between high and low creative subjects. Neuropsychologia, 38: 873–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carson, S. H., Peterson, J. B., & Higgins, D. M. (2003). Decreased latent inhibition is associated with increased creative achievement in high-functioning individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85: 499–506.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chatterjee, A., Hamilton, R. H., & Amorapanth, P. X. (2006). Art produced by a patient with Parkinson's disease. Behavioural Neurology, 17: 105–08.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chavez-Eakle, R. A., Graff-Guerrero, A., Garcia-Reyna, J. C., Vaugier, V., & Cruz-Fuentes, C. (2007). Cerebral blood flow associated with creative performance: a comparative study. Neuroimage, 38: 519–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (2002). Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 3: 201–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Courtney, S. M., Petit, L., Haxby, J. V., & Ungerleider, L. G. (1998a). The role of prefrontal cortex in working memory: examining the contents of consciousness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, Biological Sciences, 353: 1819–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Courtney, S. M., Petit, L., Maisog, J. M., Ungerleider, L. G., & Haxby, J. V. (1998b). An area specialized for spatial working memory in human frontal cortex. Science, 279: 1347–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York, NY: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity. New York, NY: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). Implications of a systems perspective for the study of creativity. In: Sternberg, R. J. & Smith, E. E. (Eds.). Handbook of Creativity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 313–35.Google Scholar
Cummings, J. L., Miller, B., Hill, M. A., & Neshkes, R. (1987). Neuropsychiatric aspects of multi-infarct dementia and dementia of the Alzheimer type. Archives of Neurology, 44: 389–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Damasio, H., Grabowski, T., Frank, R., Galaburda, A. M., & Damasio, A. R. (1994). The return of Phineas Gage: clues about the brain from the skull of a famous patient. Science, 264: 1102–05.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dietrich, A. (2004). The cognitive neuroscience of creativity. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11: 1011–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elbert, T., & Rockstroh, B. (2004). Reorganization of human cerebral cortex: the range of changes following use and injury. Neuroscientist, 10: 129–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flaherty, A. W. (2005). Frontotemporal and dopaminergic control of idea generation and creative drive. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493: 147–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gardner, H. (1993). Creating Minds: an Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham and Gandhi. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gaser, C., & Schlaug, G. (2003). Brain structures differ between musicians and non-musicians. Journal of Neuroscience, 23: 9240–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Gorno-Tempini, M. L., Dronkers, N. F., Rankin, K. P., et al. (2004). Cognition and anatomy in three variants of primary progressive aphasia. Annals of Neurology, 55: 335–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Green, H. A., & Patterson, K. (2009). Jigsaws – a preserved ability in semantic dementia. Neuropsychologia, 47: 569–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hudspeth, S. (1985). The neurological correlates of creative thought. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.Google Scholar
Kawabata, H., & Zeki, S. (2004). Neural correlates of beauty. Journal of Neurophysiology, 91: 1699–705.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keenan, J. P., Wheeler, M. A., Gallup, G. G., & Pascual-Leone, A. (2000). Self-recognition and the right prefrontal cortex. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4: 338–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keltikangas-Jarvinen, L., Elovainio, M., Kivimaki, M., Lichtermann, D., Ekelund, J., & Peltonen, L. (2003). Association between the type 4 dopamine receptor gene polymorphism and novelty seeking. Psychosomatic Medicine, 65: 471–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kulisevsky, J., Pagonabarraga, J., & Martinez-Corral, M. (2009). Changes in artistic style and behaviour in Parkinson's disease: dopamine and creativity. Journal of Neurology, 256: 816–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lubow, R., & Weiner, I. (2010). Latent Inhibition. Cognition, Neuroscience and Applications to Schizophrenia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lythgoe, M. F., Pollak, T. A., Kalmus, M., Haan, M., & Chong, W. K. (2005). Obsessive, prolific artistic output following subarachnoid hemorrhage. Neurology, 64: 397–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martindale, C. (1971). Degeneration, disinhibition, and genius. Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, 7: 177–82.3.0.CO;2-N>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martindale, C. (1977). Creativity, consciousness, and cortical arousal. Journal of Altered States of Consciousness, 3: 69–87.Google Scholar
Martindale, C. (1999). Biological bases of creativity. In: Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.). Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 137–52.Google Scholar
Martindale, C., & Hines, D. (1975). Creativity and cortical activation during creative, intellectual and EEG feedback tasks. Biological Psychology, 3: 91–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martindale, C., Anderson, K., Moore, K., & West, A. N. (1996). Creativity, oversensitivity, and rate of habituation. Personality and Individual Differences, 20: 423–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, B. L., Boone, K., Cummings, J. L., Read, S. L., & Mishkin, F. (2000). Functional correlates of musical and visual ability in frontotemporal dementia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 176: 458–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, B. L., Cummings, J., Mishkin, F., et al. (1998). Emergence of artistic talent in frontotemporal dementia. Neurology, 51: 978–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mink, J. W. (1996). The basal ganglia: focused selection and inhibition of competing motor programs. Progress in Neurobiology, 50: 381–425.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Orenstein, A. (1991). The Ballets of Maurice Ravel: creation and interpretation. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Perkins, D. N. (1988). Creativity and the quest for mechanism. In: Sternberg, R. J. & Smith, E. E. (Eds.). Psychology of Human Thought. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 309–36.Google Scholar
Pessiglione, M., Seymour, B., Flandin, G., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2006). Dopamine-dependent prediction errors underpin reward-seeking behaviour in humans. Nature, 442: 1042–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rankin, K. P., Liu, A. A., Howard, S., et al. (2007). A case-controlled study of altered visual art production in Alzheimer's and FTLD. Cognitive and Behavioural Neurology, 20: 48–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sacks, O. W. (2007). Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (1st ed.). New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Savitz, J. B., & Ramesar, R. S. (2004). Genetic variants implicated in personality: a review of the more promising candidates. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B, Neuropsychiatric Genetics, 131B: 20–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schon, D., Anton, J. L., Roth, M., & Besson, M. (2002). An fMRI study of music sight-reading. Neuroreport, 13: 2285–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schrag, A., & Trimble, M. (2001). Poetic talent unmasked by treatment of Parkinson's disease. Movement Disorders, 16: 1175–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seeley, W. W., Allman, J. M., Carlin, D. A., et al. (2007). Divergent social functioning in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer disease: reciprocal networks and neuronal evolution. Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders, 21: S50–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seeley, W. W., Matthews, B. R., Crawford, R. K., et al. (2008). Unravelling Bolero: progressive aphasia, transmodal creativity and the right posterior neocortex. Brain, 131: 39–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sergent, J. Z., Terriah, S., & MacDonald, B. (1992). Distributed neural network underlying musical sight-reading and keyboard performance. Science, 257: 106–09.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simonton, D. K. (1994). Greatness: Who Makes History and Why. New York, NY: Guildford Press.Google Scholar
Simonton, D. K. (2000). Creativity. Cognitive, personal, developmental, and social aspects. American Psychologist, 55: 151–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snyder, A. W., Mulcahy, E., Taylor, J. L., Mitchell, D. J., Sachdev, P., & Gandevia, S. C. (2003). Savant-like skills exposed in normal people by suppressing the left fronto-temporal lobe. Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, 2: 149–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swerdlow, N. R., Stephany, N., Wasserman, L. C., Talledo, J., Sharp, R., & Auerbach, P. P. (2003). Dopamine agonists disrupt visual latent inhibition in normal males using a within-subject paradigm. Psychopharmacology (Berlin), 169: 314–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Viskontas, I. V., Boxer, A. L., Fesenko, J., et al. (2011). Visual search patterns in semantic dementia show paradoxical facilitation of binding processes. Neuropsychologia, 40: 468–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Z., Costa, D. C., Walker, R. W., et al. (2004). Striatal dopamine transporter in dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson disease: a comparison. Neurology, 62: 1568–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×