J. T. Fuller | August 2, 2021
The “mad genius” debate, or the intersection of creativity and psychopathology, has been discussed by many, going at least as far back as Ancient Greece. According to Aristotle, “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” A developing area of study, the neuroscience of creativity, shows promise of finding more tangible answers to this age-old question. The available literature demonstrates a pool of interested researchers hypothesizing and testing out possible connections and a crowd of skeptics criticizing reports connecting creativity and psychopathology as anything more than coincidence. It is evident that more research is necessary before a conclusion can be drawn.
The neuroscience of creativity has recently blossomed as an area of research, and is a neuroscience frontier, complete with its own society and textbook. One significant step from this field is the recognition that the left brain/right brain dichotomy is a gross oversimplification of how skills are managed across the brain. Instead, researchers have identified three primary networks thought to be involved with creativity: the executive attention (EA) network, the default network (DN), and the salience network (SN). The EA network is activated to provide a spotlight on the task at hand, involving the anterior cingulate and anterior insula. The DN is activated with imagination, whenever the focus turns inwards, and has nodes in the medial prefrontal lobe, left and right lateral parietal lobes, and posterior cingulate. The SN works to subconsciously process information, determining whether something is interesting; it has nodes located on the left anterior insula, anterior cingulate, and right anterior cingulate and is modulated by both dopamine and serotonin. One theory, supported by fMRI imaging, uses the connection strength between these three areas to predict creativity, with a stronger connection being atypical and indicative of higher creativity. In typical brains, two of these areas work against the third; in highly creative brains, all three areas are activated at the same time. Other research has linked SN dysfunction to various disorders, including schizophrenia, autism, and mood disorders.
In the context of the “mad genius” debate, the creativity side appears fairly well defined as the ability to produce novel and useful work but the lack of a consensus on the term is problematic as it is quite broad. How this is measured is up for debate, but a promising indicator is the combination of cognitive (latent) disinhibition with high IQ as a predictor of extraordinary creative achievement. Latent inhibition (LI) is the brain’s mechanism for filtering unimportant information in the context of operant conditioning, and low LI has been associated with both psychotic conditions and creativity stemming from the influx of unbridled stimuli.
Another link between abnormal psychology and exceptional creativity is the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is related to pleasure, mood, attention, motivation and motor control. Dopamine is associated with various mental health conditions, such as addiction, ADHD, schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder and OCD. There are also strong correlations between dopamine and creativity; for example, there is evidence that genes involved with dopamine contribute to creativity. That said, dopamine may have some focused impact but is so intertwined with brain function that its functioning cannot be simply explained.
There are many critics poking holes in the available research. Criticisms range from overly-broad question framing, questionable methodologies and questionable interpretation of the data. Another critic compares the inquiry to looking through a dark, dirty glass and finding a fire-breathing dragon shedding no light on the question. That is to say, there are many skeptics left unconvinced, and not without good reason. Even proponents of the “mad genius” argument suggest reframing the question to narrow the inquiry into more manageable pieces.
Since all behavior is based on nervous system activity, we know both creativity and abnormal psychology must be based on nervous system activity. We don’t know yet whether the same nervous system activity is involved, but there is clearly some overlap between the nervous system activity causing creativity and the nervous system activity causing abnormal psychology. Perhaps this is due to dopamine, perhaps due to differences in LI, and/or perhaps related to the SN, or perhaps it’s just a coincidence and a “mad genius” merely stands out because they are such an anomaly.
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