The idea that creative geniuses might not be entirely sane isn’t exactly new. But just how much do creative types have in common with people suffering from psychosis? Well, according to Daniel Nettle at the University of Newcastle, serious poets and artists have just as many ‘unusual experiences’ as people diagnosed with schizophrenia. What saves them from the disabling effects of schizophrenia is that they don’t suffer from the lack of emotion and motivation – known as ‘introvertive anhedonia’ – also associated with the illness.

Nettle asked artists and poets, mental health patients and ‘non-creative’, healthy controls to fill out a questionnaire that’s designed to detect schizophrenic-like symptoms in healthy people. Participants seriously involved in poetry or art (as opposed to mere hobbyists, or non-creative controls) reported having just as many unusual experiences as did patients diagnosed with schizophrenia – that is they tended to answer yes to questions like “Do you think you could learn to read others’ minds if you wanted to?” or “Are the sounds you hear in your daydreams really clear and distinct?”. However, in contrast, they scored lower than both patients and healthy controls on measures of lack of emotion and motivation.

BPS Research

A neuroscientist claims he can unleash creativity by boosting low-frequency brainwaves, and he’s tested the theory on 100 students at the Royal College of Music.

According to an exhibition at the Science Museum in London, the brain can be trained to slow itself down and, by doing so, lift musicians’ performances by at least one grade.

And it’s not just scientists who are convinced of this. The award-winning pianist Cassie Yukawa, 25, was introduced to the technique – known as neurofeedback treatment – at the Royal College of Music. “I was introduced to Professor John Gruzelier [a psychologist then at Imperial College], and he said he was going to change my brain, which sounded very exciting – like The Matrix,” she says.

Seven years on, she is in no doubt that the theory works. “It has had a wonderful impact on my life, enhancing my general feeling of wellbeing,” she says. “And I have no doubt that it has had a positive effect on my performances. It is about a state of mind; I am now far more willing to be flexible in my playing. It enabled me to think about and explore performance.”

During treatment, sensors are placed on the scalp and ears to monitor the electrical activity in the brain – or brainwaves. High-frequency brainwaves occur when you are very alert and agitated, whereas lowerfrequency brainwaves dominate during relaxation or sleep. The sensors are hooked up to a computer, producing a graph that looks not unlike a heartbeat pattern.

The aim is to push the brain into a state of near-sleep to produce the slow rhythms, known as theta waves, associated with this state. It’s the kind of relaxed state in which ideas often come to you. It occurs naturally if, say, you are driving on a motorway and realise that you don’t remember the previous few minutes.

Belfast Telegraph