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Unread 07-28-2014, 06:21 AM
Janice D. Soderling's Avatar
Janice D. Soderling Janice D. Soderling is offline
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Default Secrets of the Creative Brain

I found this interesting. Possibly some others also will.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/...-brain/372299/
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  #2  
Unread 07-28-2014, 07:48 AM
Shaun J. Russell Shaun J. Russell is offline
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Fascinating article, Janice. Thanks for that. I'm no genius, but most of this resonates with me regardless. I discovered about a year or so ago that if I was struggling to come up with a thesis, or needed to find "inspiration" for something, or even just needed to sort through stuff that was proving to be difficult, the best remedy was what I eventually dubbed as a "thinkrest." Just lying down with my eyes closed -- not with the intention of napping, but simply to let my mind wander -- usually prompted the creative surge I needed. The problem is always hanging on to that surge just long enough to put it to use.

I also find it interesting (though not wholly unsurprising) that many, if not most creative types have mental illness in their families. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of 'Spherians are in the same boat. As someone with close relatives who have (or had) clinical depression, agoraphobia, and paranoid schizophrenia, I certainly am...
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Unread 07-28-2014, 11:11 PM
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Norman Ball Norman Ball is offline
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Thanks for this Janice.

"I realized that I obviously couldn’t capture the entire creative process—instead, I could home in on the parts of the brain that make creativity possible."

That's a crucial and fair admission. We mustn't forget the mind and the complete mystery of consciousness which science still tends to regard (almost superstitiously) as originating in the brain. The heart plays a role in consciousness as do probably other organs of the body. Thus you have to think creativity is not the exclusive province of brain IQ and that consciousness plays some role in the creative process.

http://www.in5d.com/heart-has-brain-...ciousness.html

Last edited by Norman Ball; 07-29-2014 at 07:13 AM.
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Unread 07-29-2014, 04:36 AM
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Claudia Gary Claudia Gary is offline
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Default Autodidacts, polymaths...

Thank you for posting this, Janice.

Down toward the very end of the article are a few items that have nothing at all to do with mental illness, and I found those especially interesting.

One is persistence in the face of rejection.

Another has to do with being autodidactic, or at least having one's own style of learning.

And then there's this:

---
"Many creative people are polymaths, as historic geniuses including Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were. George Lucas was awarded not only the National Medal of Arts in 2012 but also the National Medal of Technology in 2004. Lucas’s interests include anthropology, history, sociology, neuroscience, digital technology, architecture, and interior design....
"...The arts and the sciences are seen as separate tracks, and students are encouraged to specialize in one or the other. If we wish to nurture creative students, this may be a serious error."
---

I guess the mental illness angle is more likely to sell magazines or web ads! Perhaps the author was obliged to bury the above positive comments for that reason. But I think the items above are worthy of much more attention. Maybe they should be the real focus, in fact. After all, even if a creative individual were mentally ill, it would be that person's strengths -- such as resilience, persistence, independent thinking, and "polymath" qualities -- that would enable him or her to emerge into a creatively productive life, rather than merely an ill life.

Last edited by Claudia Gary; 07-29-2014 at 04:46 AM.
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Unread 07-29-2014, 08:22 AM
Matt Q Matt Q is offline
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Studies linking mental illness and creativity have often been criticised for being poorly designed, using criteria that are way too broad, or having too small a sample size. In respect of the last, this quote in particular stuck out for me in this article:

"Two of the 13 creative subjects in my current study have lost a parent to suicide—a rate many times that of the general U.S. population."

Firstly, suicide is not a form of mental illness; although some diagnoses of mental illness (e.g. Bipolar Disorder) clearly are associated with a significantly increased risk of suicide, many people with no mental health diagnosis kill themselves; suicide is typically a response to overwhelming mental pain, and anyone can experience that if life kicks them hard enough from enough directions.

Secondly, and more importantly, bear in mind that in any randomly selected group of thirteen people, the chances of them not have some property at a rate far higher (or far lower) than the national average is vanishingly small. From a statistic perspective, her figures are meaningless without a confidence interval (an estimate of the probability that the situation arose by chance). That group may also have a higher than the national average number of blue-eyed people. What, if anything, could we conclude from that? I thought this was really poor writing from a scientist. She presents as persuasive something that she must know may simply be attributable to chance. That's simply bad science.

Onto the question of the link between mental illness and creativity. There do also seem to be many large studies that find no connection at all. And as I said above, the methodology of many that do find a connection are questionable. Here's an article arguing that there's no evidence for a connection between madness and creativity, citing large studies that have found nothing, and claiming flaws in a recent large scale Swedish study. It seems to me that the jury's still out on this one.

Matt

Last edited by Matt Q; 07-29-2014 at 08:37 AM. Reason: typo our->out
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Unread 07-29-2014, 09:45 AM
Mary McLean Mary McLean is offline
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I'd second Matt's criticisms and also add the question of how these 13 subjects were identified. Was the researcher really blind to the possibility of mental illness and suicide in the families of the people? It seems like that would be difficult to ensure with such a subjective method of selection.
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Unread 07-30-2014, 12:09 AM
Stephen Hampton Stephen Hampton is offline
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"Capturing human mental processes can be like capturing quicksilver. The brain has as many neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way." From the article. Not sure if either statement is accurate. However, all biological brains are phenomenally complex neurologically, and have great capacity for intelligence, information, memory, recall, sensory perception, orientation within physical reality, etc , and "creative" thinking demonstrative of emulation, innovation, complex problem solving, imagination, dreaming, so on and so forth. We human beings are not so unique and superior of awareness as we may think. Do not some whales compose unique symphonic works, and occasionally commit suicide?
I disagree with this overreaching premise of the writer "mental illness is a secret of creative minds" Paraphrasing.
Much of that which we define as human "mental illness" is an inevitable fact of our naturally aging diminishing biological existence, and in some cases, an insane reaction to the reality of an insanely vain and temporal life does occur. Extremely sad and terribly tragic when such occurs among the young - more frightening as such occurrences become more frequent, and more frequently reported.
Normally, individually, our human health of mind, and body, and soul, ebbs and flows through out life - and ultimately ends.
So goes our creativity, artistically and otherwise, sometimes radically, even insanely - sometimes not.
The secrets of creative minds are most likely as numerous as the secrets (those imperceptible things) of cosmic reality - more or less.
Enjoyed the reading, and the thinking, here in this thread.
SWH
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Unread 07-30-2014, 01:25 AM
Janice D. Soderling's Avatar
Janice D. Soderling Janice D. Soderling is offline
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Although some creative people have a history of mental disturbance, it does not follow that all mentally disturbed people are creative.

That said, the study is an interesting one. Divergent thinking is a necessary bulwark against totalitarianism.

Last edited by Janice D. Soderling; 08-23-2014 at 08:11 AM.
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  #9  
Unread 07-30-2014, 02:32 AM
Mary McLean Mary McLean is offline
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Rick,if creativity is not a cerebral function, can scientists be creative? I certainly think some of them make pretty impressive imaginative leaps. Creativity isn't just having an idea, it's having the knowledge to see its potential and putting in the hard work to develop it.
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Unread 07-30-2014, 03:34 AM
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Norman Ball Norman Ball is offline
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I suppose my trouble starts with the title itself, the 'creative brain' which may proffer an appendix from the get-go. The biggest secret may be that the brain is not the seat of creativity in the first place.
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