• Janusz Rybakowski, Paulina Klonowska, Amelia Patrzała, and Jan Jaracz.
• Klinika Psychiatrii Dorosłych AM w Poznaniu.
• Psychiatr Pol. 2006 Nov 1; 40 (6): 1033-49.

AbstractIn this paper, a concept has been presented stating that the process of creativity may be connected with psychopathological features such as mood disorders, mainly bipolar, and psychosis-like thought abnormalities. Biographic studies point to a more frequent occurrence of affective disorders in creative subjects and members of their families. There is also data concerning the occurrence of schizophrenia in the families of prominent persons. A number of studies have demonstrated a similarity of patients with bipolar affective illness and members of their families to creative persons, as to increased indexes of creativity as well as such temperamental features as cyclothymia, neuroticism and openness. An association has been also found between the dimension of"psychoticism", schizotypal features and the measures of creativity. A reduction of the so called "latent inhibition" mechanism, resulting in perception of seemingly irrelevant external stimuli is connected with a predisposition to both increased creativity and schizophrenia-like disturbances. A neurobiological model of generating ideas and creative drive assumes a dominant role of three brain structures: frontal lobes, temporal lobes and the mesolimbic system. The neurotransmission system mostly connected with elevated mood and psychotic thinking is the dopaminergic system, especially its mesolimbic and cortical pathways. Both neurobiological and pharmacological evidence has been accumulated for an association of these pathways with motivational, emotional and cognitive processes, and indirectly, with the processes of creativity. In recent years, a number of interesting results has also been obtained from molecular-genetic studies about genetic determinants of creativity processes in association with bipolar mood changes and psychotic conditions.

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