Neuroscientist Dr. Nancy Andreasen writes a The Atlantic feature, “Secrets of the Creative Brain.” She’s done years of research on writers, artists, inventors, and other creative types. Initially, her work was based largely on interviews, but over the years she’s added modern tools, such as neuroimaging technology.
It’s a challenging area of research, inherently subjective (how do you define a creative person, anyway?), limited (small sample sizes), that focuses on the least understood human organ: the brain.
Andreasen shares several interesting conclusions from her study. For example, there’s a myth that creative geniuses are super intelligent people. Her investigation is consistent with findings by earlier scientists that above a certain point, there’s no correlation between IQ and creativity:
Subsequent studies by other researchers have reinforced Terman’s conclusions, leading to what’s known as the threshold theory, which holds that above a certain level, intelligence doesn’t have much effect on creativity: most creative people are pretty smart, but they don’t have to be that smart, at least as measured by conventional intelligence tests. An IQ of 120, indicating that someone is very smart but not exceptionally so, is generally considered sufficient for creative genius.
She has also found that creative genius is somewhat hereditary, and often accompanied by mood disorders.
One after another, my writer subjects came to my office and spent three or four hours pouring out the stories of their struggles with mood disorder—mostly depression, but occasionally bipolar disorder. A full 80 percent of them had had some kind of mood disturbance at some time in their lives, compared with just 30 percent of the control group—only slightly less than an age-matched group in the general population.
As for what distinguishes the creative mind versus that of ordinary people, Andreasen posits the following theory:
creative people are better at recognizing relationships, making associations and connections, and seeing things in an original way—seeing things that others cannot see.
What is the catalyst for creative ideas? Often they are the product of prolonged preparation and incubation. Other times they come in sudden, inspirational (“a ha”) moments:
As for how these ideas emerge, almost all of my subjects confirmed that when eureka moments occur, they tend to be precipitated by long periods of preparation and incubation, and to strike when the mind is relaxed—during that state we called REST [episodic silent thought]. “A lot of it happens when you are doing one thing and you’re not thinking about what your mind is doing,” one of the artists in my study told me. “I’m either watching television, I’m reading a book, and I make a connection … It may have nothing to do with what I am doing, but somehow or other you see something or hear something or do something, and it pops that connection together.”
Many subjects mentioned lighting on ideas while showering, driving, or exercising. One described a more unusual regimen involving an afternoon nap: “It’s during this nap that I get a lot of my work done. I find that when the ideas come to me, they come as I’m falling asleep, they come as I’m waking up, they come if I’m sitting in the tub. I don’t normally take baths … but sometimes I’ll just go in there and have a think.”
Three other observations in the article:
- Many creative people are autodidacts (they like to teach themselves)
- Many creative people are polymaths (a person versed in several different fields)
- Creative people tend to be very persistent, even when confronted with skepticism or rejection
Andreasen has made a laudable contribution to neuroscience. However, this article reminds me that when it comes to the brain, we don’t understand far more about it than we do.