mcgrew writes "New Scientist is reporting that creativity may be linked to schizophrenia via a common gene. Szabolcs Kéri, a researcher at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, carried a study of creative people. 'Kéri examined a gene involved in brain development called neuregulin 1, which previous studies have linked to a slightly increased risk of schizophrenia. Moreover, a single DNA letter mutation that affects how much of the neuregulin 1 protein is made in the brain has been linked to psychosis, poor memory and sensitivity to criticism. About 50 per cent of healthy Europeans have one copy of this mutation, while 15 per cent possess two copies. People with two copies of the neuregulin 1 mutation — about 12 per cent of the study participants — tended to score notably higher on these measures of creativity, compared with other volunteers with one or no copy of the mutation. Those with one copy were also judged to be more creative, on average, than volunteers without the mutation.' They hypothesize that people with this gene with high IQs are creative, while those with lower IQs are simply prone to the hallucinations that characterize the disease."
I miss his Chicken Cheese Katsu, both dinner and lunch versions. When I was contracting at Tek I'd go to his restaurant every day, and I was lucky enough to try everything on his menu.
I wish I had his knife skills- it's hard to cut a pocket in a boneless chicken breast.
I like that- it explains quite succinctly the main problem I've seen with the free market (that which is good, does not sell; that which is utter crap in a nice package, you'll earn millions off of).
Actually I would say that creativity and insanity really ARE the same thing, just the people we call crazy got a little... TOO creative and with things like their interpretation of gravity and who (or what) they think would be a good conversationalist.
Maybe. But having met people who really did have schizophrenia, I'm a little dubious of this theory (which I've heard before). To use a computer analogy, my perception of their experience was not just that their brains started producing/storing inaccurate data, but that the program code was also not working as intended. One of the most striking examples was their speech patterns, where in certain cases they would say things that had the timbre and cadence of normal English speech, but if you actually paid a
If random corruption of "data" and "program code" in the brain is the root of creativity, then it seems to me that creativity is a very inefficient, brute-force method, which is only practical in people without schizophrenia because our brains have the processing power to discard (at some subconscious layer) the huge number of results that aren't worth pursuing.
I think that creativity is the ability to make associations/connections in unusual or unexpected ways. This can be good - applying, say, buddhist ph
One of the most striking examples was their speech patterns, where in certain cases they would say things that had the timbre and cadence of normal English speech, but if you actually paid attention it didn't make any sense - it was just nonsensical syllables strung together in a pattern that superficially sounded like English.
That wouldn't be correct. It's not gibberish, the way that it looks, it's not that much different than speaking perl rather than English. It means something to the person, and the connections between the phrases has definite meaning, it's just meant for other people to not understand what it is that they're saying. But simultaneously, they'll frequently want for the person they're speaking to to be able to understand it.
I've had full out psychotic breaks where the doctors involved referred to my diagnosi
That reminds me of a slightly lower functioning autistic (I have Asperger's and I'm into the neurodiversity movement) on youtube as of late- who insists that her behavior MUST be interpreted as communication because she's "communicating" with her environment (water, wind, sunlight, etc). Apparently nobody ever taught her that communication had to be two way with another sentient mind....
I just tell my friends that I'm half crazy. Whether that means all crazy half the time, or half crazy all the time I leave for them to decide.
Went through a period of psychosis in my late teens, but stayed off the anti-psychotics. Took quite a while, but got back on track without the pseudo-science quackery of psychiatry. Now I run my own business and live a pretty balanced life as a respected member of my family and the community.
Interestingly enough, the more 'artistic' (ie music) stuff I do, the more sorta crazy I get, the more I keep the artistic side in check and balanced with other things, the more 'sane' I am. Never really thought about it like that before though...
Wow, respect! I know how incredibly hard it is to get back on track! You have my full respect! And from the notion of "quackery", I know that you really know what psychatry is. ^^ I hope they soon are able to base psychology on a proper neurologic foundation, and can then throw away what we call psychatry, and many of thosp pseudo-therapies of psychology, and actually cure people, instead of just muting their brain functionaliy or talking and talking without results.
His grammar was fitting for a man whose first language had a different grammar structure entirely. I suspect strongly that the poem was his own translation.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday July 17, @05:04PM (#28735569)
"Moreover, a single DNA letter mutation that affects how much of the neuregulin 1 protein is made in the brain has been linked to psychosis, poor memory and sensitivity to criticism. About 50 per cent of healthy Europeans have one copy of this mutation, while 15 per cent possess two copies."
This explains perfectly the past 250 years of European history.
Smart people can tell the voices in their head are their own thoughts, while the less intelligent think they are hearing disembodied voices, not their own?
Surprisingly, that's almost exactly how the psychologist Julian Jaynes explained [wikipedia.org] the origin of consciousness: people went from hearing voices, to identifying with that voice enough for it to be their "consciousness". He also believed that modern schizophrenia is a relapse to that earlier, non-conscious, "bicameral" state.
I don't think John Forbes Nash is stupid. Nor Theodore Kaczynski, as a more dangerous example. There might be a link between schizophrenia and intelligence, but it's almost certainly not simple and causal. Perhaps the ability to distinguish between crazy-thoughts and intelligent-thoughts can be considered a special kind of intelligence, and the ability to entertain crazy-thoughts without taking them too seriously is what's needed for creative genius. Many exceptionally uncreative high-IQ people seem to lack
Perhaps the ability to distinguish between crazy-thoughts and intelligent-thoughts can be considered a special kind of intelligence, and the ability to entertain crazy-thoughts without taking them too seriously is what's needed for creative genius
I suspect it's more that intelligent people are able to abstractly consider themselves and their own behavior, and accept they have a neurological disability. People who are purely reactive to their environment and don't proactively "push their own cart" so to speak are less likely to reason around their own behavior or ask themselves why they do what they do. The cause of schizophrenia (i.e. the inability to distinguish fantasy and their own speculative thoughts from reality) likely has nothing to do wit
I think I've known more phychotic people than sane ones. An easy place to spot it is to look at people with their pets. The vast majority of them have anthropomorphized them to the point that they have lost the distinction between human and dog (or cat).
Which one produces the more fulfilling relationship, the person who "buys a dog and owns it" or the person who "adopts a dog and cares for him"?
Who has a more loving happily-trained pet? The person who treats their dog or cat like one of the family, or the person who treats their pet like something separate from their family?
We haven't lost the distinction. We've accepted the best metaphor for a mutually fulfilling relationship. My dog thinks I'm the leader of his pack. I'm happy thinking of my dog as my 3rd child, the one with all the fur. We both get to act naturally for the most part while those roles mesh perfectly. We both benefit.
If you don't understand that then please please do NOT become a pet owner. Your pet will feel lousy, act out, mope, resent you, and be a "bad pet". In reality there are no bad pets, just bad owners.**
**Being a good owner starts with the decision of IF and then WHAT EXACTLY to buy. If for instance you buy a pet based solely on appearances, you're most likely to end up with a great looking pet that does not fit with your lifestyle at all. You're screwed before you even get it home. *Adopt* a pet that can become a valued member of your family, or else stay away please. Or maybe a goldfish or hermit crab would be your best choice.
My cat thinks of me as her lord and master, the toughest cat in the street, the big lion of the pack, whatever. The way I make her realise this is by NOT treating her as I would a child. She is by no means human, which means I am freely allowed to bite her, push her off the table, or thwap her on the nose when she misbehaves.
Try teaching a human child the meaning of the phrase "Get off the table!" with pavlovian principles and you'll see how long it takes you to get a visit from social services.
My sister is diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia, started with a lower iq due to learning disabilities.
I'm pretty creative and intelligent. I always thought there was a link between the two.
Still, its only partially genetic. It needs a stress trigger as well. There are identical twins, with one developing the disorder and the other not. The odds of one with the syndrome passing it to a direct descendant are also pretty low ~ 1% chance.
While I understand that you're probably joking, there is crazy and then there is paranoid schizophrenia. Its like the difference between a corrupted jpeg, and a file of random data. One's broken, the other isn't even that.
Signature and date. Form 4506-T must be signed and dated by the taxpayer listed on line 1a or 2a. If you completed line 5 requesting the information be sent to a third party, the IRS must receive Form 4506-T within 60 days of the date signed by the taxpayer or it will be rejected. Individuals. Transcripts of jointly filed tax returns may be furnished to either spouse. Only one signature is required. Sign Form 4506-T exactly as your name appeared on the original return. If you changed your name, also sign your current name. Corporations. Generally, Form 4506-T can be signed by: (1) an officer having legal authority to bind the corporation, (2) any person designated by the board of directors or other governing body, or (3) any officer or employee on written request by any principal officer and attested
But the barbed adjectives didn't match the muted performance on display before the Judiciary Committee. Like the president who picked her, Sotomayor has been a model of professorial rationality. Besides, it's delicious watching Republicans go after Democrats for being too emotional and irrational given the G.O.P. shame spiral.
W. and Dick Cheney made all their bad decisions about Iraq, W.M.D.'s, domestic surveillance, torture, rendition and secret hit squads from the gut, based on false intuitions, fear, paranoia and revenge.
Sarah Palin is the definition of irrational, a volatile and scattered country-music queen without the music. Her Republican fans defend her lack of application and intellect, happy to settle for her emotional electricity.
Senator Graham said Sotomayor would be confirmed unless she had "a meltdown" -- a word applied mostly to women and toddlers until Mark Sanford proudly took ownership of it when he was judged about the wisdom of his Latina woman.
"Look--" he murmured, holding out his arm to stop Malfoy. Something bright white was gleaming on the ground. They inched closer. It was the unicorn all right, and it was dead. Harry had never seen anything so beautiful and sad. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves. Harry had taken one step toward it when a slithering sound made him freeze where he stood. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered. . . . Then, out of the shadows, a hooded figure came crawling across the ground like some stalking beast. Harry, Malfoy, and Fang stood transfixed. The cloaked figure reached the unicorn, lowered its head over the wound in the animal's side, and began to drink its blood. "AAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Malfoy let out a terrible scream and bolted--so did Fang. The hooded figure raised its head and looked right at Harry--unicorn blood was dribbling down its front. It got to its feet and came swiftly toward Harry--he couldn't move for fear.
Americans are dumb, educated ONE stupid and they worship ONEism Evil. It is not immoral to kill believers, for the stupid bastards EVOLVE from son or daughter who precedes them. NOT one damn human adult has ever been created - for ONLY babies are CREATED - and every adult has within them the LIFE given by children who DIE to give-up their lives to their parent image - so their mom or Dad can live. Adults are EVIL to deny they evolved from children - a
Creative/artistic type people have active imaginations?! Holy News Flash Batman! I can't wait for the story about how librarians have a gene that has been tied to OCD.
1) I have schizophrenia (paranoid delusional, no visual or auditory hallucinations). 2) I am not creative, at all...in any artistic sense. Except maybe with words, poetry, scrabble. 3) I have an extremely vivid and active imagination. 4) My nervous system is very sensitive, I have to take meds to 'turn them down' so I'm relaxed. 5) I have an IQ of 133 and an interest in math and science; degrees in physics and computer science.
If you are smart enough to know when you have "weird thoughts", you can shrug your shoulders and go on with life, perhaps even putting those "creative notions" to some practical or artistic use.
If you are not too bright, you might believe all manner of crazy shit your mind comes up with and act on it. The worst cases might start a religion or live with the pigeons.
Yes, evolution does not care about the individual, just the result. I dare say all personality disorders - hell, all diseases of young age! - that have a genetic cause and have a prevalence of more than >1% increase the overall fitness of the species either directly or because the poor suckers that get the two copies of it don't outweigh the advantage for the others.
I even expect the cancer rate to be fine tuned between making a species too static in an ever changing world and killing too many individuals. Some species, IIRC crocodiles, practically never get cancer, so it probably is not a limitation of the eukaryotic cell.
Another example is of course homosexuality, understanding went from "It can't be natural - it is the end of the line for the individual's genes!", to finding more and more animal species enjoying it to actually being able to explain that it (male h.) benefits the female line. Dawkin's The Selfish Gene comes to mind again.
Personality disorders aren't genetic. There may be an underlying predisposition to stress or poor coping mechanisms, but personality disorders are not genetic in nature. They're caused primarily by environmental factors and they're definitely not mental illness in a technical sense. They aren't treatable via medication and even the as yet unproven brain chemistry explanation of mental illness doesn't apply. Medications aren't likely to ever help out much.
Personality disorders are better thought of as a c
Personality disorders aren't genetic. There may be an underlying predisposition to stress or poor coping mechanisms, but personality disorders are not genetic in nature. They're caused primarily by environmental factors
Right, and the notable differences in brain morphology are merely due to "environmental" factors.
and they're definitely not mental illness in a technical sense.
How about this [wikipedia.org] and this? [wikipedia.org] Those are extremely technical.
They aren't treatable via medication
...
Medications aren't likely to ever help out much.
Have you ever been diagnosed for a mental disorder and prescribed medication? I have, and it makes a world of difference. I know other people who have, and they concur. The meds can mean the difference between being able to live a productive life and being locked down in a padded cell. You don't know what you're talking about.
and even the as yet unproven brain chemistry explanation of mental illness doesn't apply.
...
Personality disorders are better thought of as a culture that's unique the the person and not to the people around which the person is living. It's a systematic adjustment that the brain makes to cope with adverse conditions and it's not something which can be readily separated from the individual's self. As opposed to mental illnesses where people will frequently have periods, however brief, of remission.
Creativity is hard to categorise. However, it also isn't completely random. When I'm working on a project, I can get myself into "daydream" mode and gently steer my creativity to find answers to the question or problem at hand, so I would guess that even if it is random firing of neurons, it is random firing of the neurons active at that moment. This means that it certainly is NOT random, because you can choose what to think about, and hence, steer that random firing to get a result. Evolution likes that.
With e.g. schitzophrenia, I think that people who have a double copy of the gene and have a high(er) IQ are more likely to find a way around the problem and deal with it. I would guess I'm one of the lucky guys with a double expression of the gene, but also with a good IQ. A lot of what was said was very recogniseable - I've fought with depression, burnout and more, and also had an immense war between myself and my own mind, and have seriously questioned my sanity, before I finally learned to detach from my thoughts and emotions, and stand behind them as it were instead of being dragged along with them on a very rough rollercoaster ride. Meditation, sports, the forced responsibility of having to run my own company and lots of research saved my sanity. Now my creativity is a tool, a part of my mind which can be accessed at will instead of a scary the-voices-say-the-universe-hates-you personal enemy you can carry everywhere you go. I am the eye of the storm, as it were, and it is no longer easy to rip me loose - I would guess that only a long, sustained depression combined with stress over a period of years could do that (because it means that slowly but surely your belief in yourself and your self-imposed structure will be eroded by the negative emotional flood from the amygdala).
I think the problem is compounded once you get depressed. It seems to me that creativity is rampant throughout the brain. When I was depressed, it seemed that my "logical" brain was less active and my "emotional" brain ran the show - all my reactions were negative and emo. This might be because the amygdala seems to "shout louder" at certain times than others, or maybe the rest of the brain is more overwhelmed by its "voice" during depression because it is less active, I don't know. At any rate, it means you are completely at the mercy of emotional reasoning and the torrent of feelings because you don't have your "logical net" to tell you "nah, I'm dramatizing again" and you simply shrug them off as an itch.
At any rate, I know a few others like myself and their stories are similar: mental override, take control, avoid pitfalls of deep feelings (unless they're positive, and even then keep an eye on them), and view the world as a statistical game instead of a personal interaction. The latter is probably the most important, because once you start trying to ascribe a (negative) personal meaning to the events that influence you - for example: "God made me lose my job because I'm bad / worthless / whatever", then you open Pandora's Box on your own mind. That's also one of my warning signs that I may be stressed out or in a downward spiral, and that I need to take more breaks and relax more: if I find my mind trying to reason like that, I know I'm in the danger zone, so I adjust for it. Not doing so probably means you'll end up creating another religion based on frustrated depression.
I think a lot of people have conversations with imaginary personalities in their heads. I know I tend to spontaneously test out ideas that way, and I'm not the only one I know who does that. What language the conversation happens to be in depends mostly on what language I've been using recently. It is handy in terms of learning languages, of course, since you quickly run into things you want to say and don't know how to, so you find out.
To be fair, schizophrenia does come from the Greek for "split mind". The fact that it's used to label a disorder characterized by a distorted perception of reality rather than dissociative identity disorder (which may or may not be a real disorder anyway), is rather unhelpful in trying to emphasize the difference.
That may very well be true, but as a highly creative person myself, I can state categorically that my best ideas come from the voices in my head.
Crazy Chef Sato (Score:5, Interesting)
This was on the menu of my favorite Restaurant throughout the 1990s in Beaverton, OR (It died when Tektronix scaled back):
Eight out of ten people are normal
One maybe genius,
One maybe crazy,
I hesitate to call myself genius,
That leaves only one choice
Easily the most creative Japanese/American fusion chef I've ever met.
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I miss his Chicken Cheese Katsu, both dinner and lunch versions. When I was contracting at Tek I'd go to his restaurant every day, and I was lucky enough to try everything on his menu.
I wish I had his knife skills- it's hard to cut a pocket in a boneless chicken breast.
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And here's today's fortune-cookie quote:
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell. -- Confucius
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I like that- it explains quite succinctly the main problem I've seen with the free market (that which is good, does not sell; that which is utter crap in a nice package, you'll earn millions off of).
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Actually I would say that creativity and insanity really ARE the same thing, just the people we call crazy got a little... TOO creative and with things like their interpretation of gravity and who (or what) they think would be a good conversationalist.
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Maybe. But having met people who really did have schizophrenia, I'm a little dubious of this theory (which I've heard before). To use a computer analogy, my perception of their experience was not just that their brains started producing/storing inaccurate data, but that the program code was also not working as intended. One of the most striking examples was their speech patterns, where in certain cases they would say things that had the timbre and cadence of normal English speech, but if you actually paid a
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If random corruption of "data" and "program code" in the brain is the root of creativity, then it seems to me that creativity is a very inefficient, brute-force method, which is only practical in people without schizophrenia because our brains have the processing power to discard (at some subconscious layer) the huge number of results that aren't worth pursuing.
I think that creativity is the ability to make associations/connections in unusual or unexpected ways. This can be good - applying, say, buddhist ph
Schizo, or just Dutch? (Score:5, Funny)
One of the most striking examples was their speech patterns, where in certain cases they would say things that had the timbre and cadence of normal English speech, but if you actually paid attention it didn't make any sense - it was just nonsensical syllables strung together in a pattern that superficially sounded like English.
So in other words, they were speaking Dutch.
Parent
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I've had full out psychotic breaks where the doctors involved referred to my diagnosi
Re:Crazy Chef Sato (Score:4, Interesting)
That reminds me of a slightly lower functioning autistic (I have Asperger's and I'm into the neurodiversity movement) on youtube as of late- who insists that her behavior MUST be interpreted as communication because she's "communicating" with her environment (water, wind, sunlight, etc). Apparently nobody ever taught her that communication had to be two way with another sentient mind....
Parent
Re:Crazy Chef Sato (Score:5, Interesting)
I just tell my friends that I'm half crazy. Whether that means all crazy half the time, or half crazy all the time I leave for them to decide.
Went through a period of psychosis in my late teens, but stayed off the anti-psychotics. Took quite a while, but got back on track without the pseudo-science quackery of psychiatry. Now I run my own business and live a pretty balanced life as a respected member of my family and the community.
Interestingly enough, the more 'artistic' (ie music) stuff I do, the more sorta crazy I get, the more I keep the artistic side in check and balanced with other things, the more 'sane' I am. Never really thought about it like that before though...
Parent
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Wow, respect! I know how incredibly hard it is to get back on track! You have my full respect! And from the notion of "quackery", I know that you really know what psychatry is. ^^
I hope they soon are able to base psychology on a proper neurologic foundation, and can then throw away what we call psychatry, and many of thosp pseudo-therapies of psychology, and actually cure people, instead of just muting their brain functionaliy or talking and talking without results.
About the music: If you think your stuff i
Hi Tom Cruise. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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His grammar was fitting for a man whose first language had a different grammar structure entirely. I suspect strongly that the poem was his own translation.
Ha!!! (Score:3, Funny)
"Moreover, a single DNA letter mutation that affects how much of the neuregulin 1 protein is made in the brain has been linked to psychosis, poor memory and sensitivity to criticism. About 50 per cent of healthy Europeans have one copy of this mutation, while 15 per cent possess two copies."
This explains perfectly the past 250 years of European history.
I don't know (Score:5, Funny)
The voices have much better ideas than me.
So they are saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
Smart people can tell the voices in their head are their own thoughts, while the less intelligent think they are hearing disembodied voices, not their own?
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Surprisingly, that's almost exactly how the psychologist Julian Jaynes explained [wikipedia.org] the origin of consciousness: people went from hearing voices, to identifying with that voice enough for it to be their "consciousness". He also believed that modern schizophrenia is a relapse to that earlier, non-conscious, "bicameral" state.
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I don't think John Forbes Nash is stupid. Nor Theodore Kaczynski, as a more dangerous example. There might be a link between schizophrenia and intelligence, but it's almost certainly not simple and causal. Perhaps the ability to distinguish between crazy-thoughts and intelligent-thoughts can be considered a special kind of intelligence, and the ability to entertain crazy-thoughts without taking them too seriously is what's needed for creative genius. Many exceptionally uncreative high-IQ people seem to lack
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Perhaps the ability to distinguish between crazy-thoughts and intelligent-thoughts can be considered a special kind of intelligence, and the ability to entertain crazy-thoughts without taking them too seriously is what's needed for creative genius
I suspect it's more that intelligent people are able to abstractly consider themselves and their own behavior, and accept they have a neurological disability. People who are purely reactive to their environment and don't proactively "push their own cart" so to speak are less likely to reason around their own behavior or ask themselves why they do what they do. The cause of schizophrenia (i.e. the inability to distinguish fantasy and their own speculative thoughts from reality) likely has nothing to do wit
Re:So they are saying... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:So they are saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer the following:
Which one produces the more fulfilling relationship, the person who "buys a dog and owns it" or the person who "adopts a dog and cares for him"?
Who has a more loving happily-trained pet? The person who treats their dog or cat like one of the family, or the person who treats their pet like something separate from their family?
We haven't lost the distinction. We've accepted the best metaphor for a mutually fulfilling relationship. My dog thinks I'm the leader of his pack. I'm happy thinking of my dog as my 3rd child, the one with all the fur. We both get to act naturally for the most part while those roles mesh perfectly. We both benefit.
If you don't understand that then please please do NOT become a pet owner. Your pet will feel lousy, act out, mope, resent you, and be a "bad pet".
In reality there are no bad pets, just bad owners.**
**Being a good owner starts with the decision of IF and then WHAT EXACTLY to buy. If for instance you buy a pet based solely on appearances, you're most likely to end up with a great looking pet that does not fit with your lifestyle at all. You're screwed before you even get it home. *Adopt* a pet that can become a valued member of your family, or else stay away please. Or maybe a goldfish or hermit crab would be your best choice.
Parent
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Try teaching a human child the meaning of the phrase "Get off the table!" with pavlovian principles and you'll see how long it takes you to get a visit from social services.
We still h
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i've always suspected as much. (Score:4, Interesting)
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...odds of one with the syndrome passing it to a direct descendant are also pretty low ~ 1% chance.
I dunno, it always seemed that crazy ran in families.... mine for example...
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Geniuses Don't Hallucinate? (Score:4, Informative)
They hypothesize that people with this gene with high IQs are creative, while those with lower IQs are simply prone to the hallucinations
Why do they hypothesize that? There are plenty of geniuses with mental health issues. Take John Nash [wikipedia.org].
Crap soup (Score:4, Insightful)
IQ, schizophrenia, creativity, all vague concepts linked together with "hard numbers" of primitive statistics.
Interesting information, to be sure, but let's not push that and turn it into another psychobabble.
neuregulin mutation count (Score:4, Insightful)
0 copies:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4506t.pdf?portlet=3 [irs.gov]
1 copy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/opinion/15dowd.html [nytimes.com]
2 copies:
http://pdfoxy.com/8986-excerpt-from-harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone-pdf.html [pdfoxy.com]
.
.
.
256 copies:
http://timecube.com/ [timecube.com]
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thought that was known for a long time (Score:2)
I thought it was known for a long time that there is a link between creativity and schizophrenia. Seems perfectly natural to me.
Stephan
John Forbes Nash, Jr.? (Score:2)
What about John Forbes Nash Jr. [wikipedia.org]? [He's the genius they based the movie A Beautiful Mind on.
Obligatory link... (Score:2)
Obligatory link...
"Screwed Up People Make Great Art [youtube.com]" by Groovelily [groovelily.com]
Well, it's obligatory for me at least.
This is news (Score:2)
Not true in my case (Score:4, Interesting)
Well,
1) I have schizophrenia (paranoid delusional, no visual or auditory hallucinations).
2) I am not creative, at all...in any artistic sense. Except maybe with words, poetry, scrabble.
3) I have an extremely vivid and active imagination.
4) My nervous system is very sensitive, I have to take meds to 'turn them down' so I'm relaxed.
5) I have an IQ of 133 and an interest in math and science; degrees in physics and computer science.
Anecdotally, bipolar seems more important (Score:5, Insightful)
History and my personal experience are full of manic-depressive artists. No substitute for statistics, of course.
Maybe the connection is just that society drives creative people crazy.
Been known, to a degree, for over 2000 years. (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is no great genius without a mixture of madness" - Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
Of course (Score:3, Interesting)
Its easier to solve a problem when you put two people on it. Even if they're both in my head.
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If you are smart enough to know when you have "weird thoughts", you can shrug your shoulders and go on with life, perhaps even putting those "creative notions" to some practical or artistic use.
If you are not too bright, you might believe all manner of crazy shit your mind comes up with and act on it. The worst cases might start a religion or live with the pigeons.
Re:Makes sense of a sort (Score:5, Insightful)
I even expect the cancer rate to be fine tuned between making a species too static in an ever changing world and killing too many individuals. Some species, IIRC crocodiles, practically never get cancer, so it probably is not a limitation of the eukaryotic cell.
Another example is of course homosexuality, understanding went from "It can't be natural - it is the end of the line for the individual's genes!", to finding more and more animal species enjoying it to actually being able to explain that it (male h.) benefits the female line. Dawkin's The Selfish Gene comes to mind again.
Parent
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Personality disorders are better thought of as a c
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Personality disorders aren't genetic. There may be an underlying predisposition to stress or poor coping mechanisms, but personality disorders are not genetic in nature. They're caused primarily by environmental factors
Right, and the notable differences in brain morphology are merely due to "environmental" factors.
and they're definitely not mental illness in a technical sense.
How about this [wikipedia.org] and this? [wikipedia.org] Those are extremely technical.
They aren't treatable via medication
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Medications aren't likely to ever help out much.
Have you ever been diagnosed for a mental disorder and prescribed medication? I have, and it makes a world of difference. I know other people who have, and they concur. The meds can mean the difference between being able to live a productive life and being locked down in a padded cell. You don't know what you're talking about.
and even the as yet unproven brain chemistry explanation of mental illness doesn't apply.
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Personality disorders are better thought of as a culture that's unique the the person and not to the people around which the person is living. It's a systematic adjustment that the brain makes to cope with adverse conditions and it's not something which can be readily separated from the individual's self. As opposed to mental illnesses where people will frequently have periods, however brief, of remission.
Citations, please. Otherw
Creativity, depression, religion, and IQ rant (Score:5, Insightful)
Creativity is hard to categorise. However, it also isn't completely random. When I'm working on a project, I can get myself into "daydream" mode and gently steer my creativity to find answers to the question or problem at hand, so I would guess that even if it is random firing of neurons, it is random firing of the neurons active at that moment. This means that it certainly is NOT random, because you can choose what to think about, and hence, steer that random firing to get a result. Evolution likes that.
With e.g. schitzophrenia, I think that people who have a double copy of the gene and have a high(er) IQ are more likely to find a way around the problem and deal with it. I would guess I'm one of the lucky guys with a double expression of the gene, but also with a good IQ. A lot of what was said was very recogniseable - I've fought with depression, burnout and more, and also had an immense war between myself and my own mind, and have seriously questioned my sanity, before I finally learned to detach from my thoughts and emotions, and stand behind them as it were instead of being dragged along with them on a very rough rollercoaster ride. Meditation, sports, the forced responsibility of having to run my own company and lots of research saved my sanity. Now my creativity is a tool, a part of my mind which can be accessed at will instead of a scary the-voices-say-the-universe-hates-you personal enemy you can carry everywhere you go. I am the eye of the storm, as it were, and it is no longer easy to rip me loose - I would guess that only a long, sustained depression combined with stress over a period of years could do that (because it means that slowly but surely your belief in yourself and your self-imposed structure will be eroded by the negative emotional flood from the amygdala).
I think the problem is compounded once you get depressed. It seems to me that creativity is rampant throughout the brain. When I was depressed, it seemed that my "logical" brain was less active and my "emotional" brain ran the show - all my reactions were negative and emo. This might be because the amygdala seems to "shout louder" at certain times than others, or maybe the rest of the brain is more overwhelmed by its "voice" during depression because it is less active, I don't know. At any rate, it means you are completely at the mercy of emotional reasoning and the torrent of feelings because you don't have your "logical net" to tell you "nah, I'm dramatizing again" and you simply shrug them off as an itch.
At any rate, I know a few others like myself and their stories are similar: mental override, take control, avoid pitfalls of deep feelings (unless they're positive, and even then keep an eye on them), and view the world as a statistical game instead of a personal interaction. The latter is probably the most important, because once you start trying to ascribe a (negative) personal meaning to the events that influence you - for example: "God made me lose my job because I'm bad / worthless / whatever", then you open Pandora's Box on your own mind. That's also one of my warning signs that I may be stressed out or in a downward spiral, and that I need to take more breaks and relax more: if I find my mind trying to reason like that, I know I'm in the danger zone, so I adjust for it. Not doing so probably means you'll end up creating another religion based on frustrated depression.
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To be fair, schizophrenia does come from the Greek for "split mind". The fact that it's used to label a disorder characterized by a distorted perception of reality rather than dissociative identity disorder (which may or may not be a real disorder anyway), is rather unhelpful in trying to emphasize the difference.
That may very well be true, but as a highly creative person myself, I can state categorically that my best ideas come from the voices in my head.