Odd People May Be Wired to Use Their Brains Creatively
By Jennifer Warner
WebMD Medical News
People known for their oddball behavior may be wired differently than the average person and may be able to use their brains more creatively.
A new study shows that people with schizotypal personalities, who behave oddly but are not schizophrenic or mentally ill, rely more heavily on the right side of their brains to access their creativity than the general population.
Creativity and odd behavior have gone hand in hand for centuries, and researchers say many famous yet quirky creative people, including Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein, and Emily Dickinson, are thought to have schizotypal personalities.
But they say these results offer neurological proof that schizotypes and other people prone to mental illness draw on the left and right sides of their brains differently and this skill may enhance their creativity.
Are Oddballs More Creative?
In the study, which appears in the journal Schizophrenia Research, researchers analyzed blood flow to the brain while completing a series of tasks that required creativity in three groups of people: schizotypes, schizophrenics, and normal people.
For example, in the first test researchers showed the participants a household object like a pencil easer and asked them to make up a new function for it.
The results showed that schizotypes were better than the other two groups at suggesting new uses for the objects.
In another test, the participants performed the same creative task while performing a second, mundane task.
The brain scans showed that all groups used both halves of the brain for creative tasks, but schizotypes activated significantly more of the right half of their brain in completing the creative tasks, which they also performed better on.
"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," researcher Brain Folley of Vanderbilt University says in a news release. "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 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," says Folley.
For example, Folley notes previous research has shown that everyday associations, such as recognizing your car key on a keychain, are controlled by the left half of your brain. But finding a new use for an object is controlled by the right half.
Therefore, schizotypes may be better at accessing both halves of their brain, which allows them to make new associations and think creatively faster and more easily than the average person.
No comments:
Post a Comment