Where love rules, there is no will to power;
and where power predominates, there love is lacking.
The one is the shadow of the other.
C.G. Jung
5/30/2010
Creative minds 'mimic schizophrenia'
BBC
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Creativity is akin to insanity, say scientists who have been studying how the mind works.
Brain scans reveal striking similarities in the thought pathways of highly creative people and those with schizophrenia.
Both groups lack important receptors used to filter and direct thought.
It could be this uninhibited processing that allows creative people to "think outside the box", say experts from Sweden's Karolinska Institute.
In some people, it leads to mental illness.
But rather than a clear division, experts suspect a continuum, with some people having psychotic traits but few negative symptoms......
Creativity is known to be associated with an increased risk of depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Similarly, people who have mental illness in their family have a higher chance of being creative.
Associate Professor Fredrik Ullen believes his findings could help explain why.
He looked at the brain's dopamine (D2) receptor genes which experts believe govern divergent thought.
He found highly creative people who did well on tests of divergent thought had a lower than expected density of D2 receptors in the thalamus - as do people with schizophrenia.
He found highly creative people who did well on tests of divergent thought had a lower than expected density of D2 receptors in the thalamus - as do people with schizophrenia.
The thalamus serves as a relay centre, filtering information before it reaches areas of the cortex, which is responsible, amongst other things, for cognition and reasoning.
"Fewer D2 receptors in the thalamus probably means a lower degree of signal filtering, and thus a higher flow of information from the thalamus," said Professor Ullen.
Mark MillardUK psychologistCreative people, like those with psychotic illnesses, tend to see the world differently to most. It's like looking at a shattered mirror
He believes it is this barrage of uncensored information that ignites the creative spark.
This would explain how highly creative people manage to see unusual connections in problem-solving situations that other people miss.
5/24/2010
Notes on Love
New York Times
Brain scan studies have shown that early romantic love generates a unique pattern of brain activity. Regions of the brain related to addiction and even mental illness light up on the scan when a person sees a photo of his or her beloved.....
There are reasons to think that culture and country influence how we love — or at least how we express it. For instance, in surveys, people from China typically describe romantic love “in much less positive terms,” notes Art Aron, a professor of psychology at Stony Brook who has conducted several love and brain scan studies.....
...more from Love on the Global Brain NYT
Romantic love can be more than heartbreaking, as Yeardley Love, 22, a lacrosse player who was slain three weeks ago by an ex-boyfriend, shows...and this is but one of dozens of recent examples of the risky side of romantic love. This is not to say that an arranged marriage, and/or using logic to guide our selection in a mate, is the answer, but it does seem safer than the romantic route.
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