鈥淭HERE is no great genius without a tincture of madness.鈥� So wrote the Roman philosopher Seneca, nearly 2000 years ago.
Today it is routine for creative geniuses from history to get retrospective diagnoses of mental illness 鈥� some more believable than others. Schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis are the most common illnesses cited, with Newton and Einstein among the most famous subjects. Vincent van Gogh and Virginia Woolf have been linked with bipolar disorder.
Few would argue that full-blown psychosis is conducive to creative accomplishment, but perhaps a little bit helps. Psychiatrists view mental health as a spectrum, with serious illness at one end and 鈥渘ormality鈥� at the other. Perhaps those in the middle have enhanced creative tendencies.
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Some evidence comes from considering the relative dominance of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. There is much dubious pop psychology written about 鈥渞ight-brain people鈥� and 鈥渓eft-brain people鈥�, but it is accepted that the left side is mainly involved in language and logical analysis, while the right side is more involved in creative thought. Various techniques for studying dominance do seem to show that people with schizophrenia have more right-brain activity.
There is also genetic evidence relating to a protein called neuregulin 1, which is involved in brain development in the womb. Jeremy Hall of the University of Edinburgh, UK, found that a mutation in the gene that codes for the protein is linked to a higher risk of schizophrenia. And last year, Szabolcs K茅ri at Semmelweis University in Hungary found that people with two copies of the mutation scored higher on a creativity test than people with one copy, who in turn scored higher than people with no copies (Psychological Science, vol 20, p 1070). K茅ri says the mutation might dampen activity in the brain鈥檚 prefrontal cortex, easing its usual brake on mood and emotions. This might unleash creativity in some, and psychotic delusions in others 鈥� with intelligence perhaps influencing the outcome.
But more work is needed, says Hall. 鈥淭he evidence for a link between creativity and mental disorders has long been speculated but rarely, if ever, proven.鈥�
Read the answer to the next question: How powerful is the subconscious?
or return to the article鈥檚 main page: Picking our brains: Nine neural frontiers
