Neurological conditions can unleash a new torrent of creativity in a few people, like opening a mystical floodgate. The aura of migraines and epilepsy may have inspired numerous artists, including Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Giorgio de Chirico, Claude Monet, and Georges Seurat. I have. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can bring out-of-the-box thinking and new artistic drive. Emergent creativity is also a rare feature of Parkinson’s disease.
But this explosion of creativity is especially true for frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Rare cases of FTD have been associated with enhanced verbal creativity, such as increased poetic flair or increased wordplay and puns, but enhanced creativity in the visual arts has been associated with this condition. This is a particularly notable feature. Interestingly, this explosion of creativity shows that the potential to create lies dormant within us and can only be released by a disease that causes the loss of language ability.
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The emergence of vibrant creative brilliance in the face of devastating neurological disease speaks to the amazing potential and resilience of the human brain.New research published in JAMA Neurology Investigate the roots of this phenomenon and provide insight into possible causes. Researchers found that as certain areas of the brain decreased in FTD, inhibition or control was released in other areas that support artistic expression.
Frontotemporal dementia is relatively rare, affecting approximately 60,000 people in the United States, and differs from Alzheimer’s disease, a much more common form of memory loss, which is the main form of dementia. FTD is named after her two brain regions, specifically the frontal and temporal lobes, that can degenerate in the disease. Not all FTD patients show the same pattern of loss in these areas. Instead, there are some variations. For example, degeneration of the temporal lobe, the locus of language in the brain, causes difficulties in generating and understanding written and spoken communication. Some FTD patients have speech production deficits in their so-called non-fluent FTD. Some people may find it difficult to understand what the words in Semantic FTD mean.
People with FTD also experience degeneration of the frontal lobe, which typically develops a range of skills related to social behavior, empathy, planning, and decision-making. Obstacles there can impair judgment and make it difficult to understand the point of view of others. The frontal lobe is also involved in the complex interplay of brain regions that support our social behavior, helping us balance our more baser desires and urges with our understanding of social norms and morals. In a healthy brain, activity in the frontal lobe can suppress activity in other areas. This interaction is a way for the brain, for example, to quell the habitual use of rude language, knowing that such reactions can cause discomfort. But in FTD, researchers suspect that damage to the frontal lobe impairs the ability to suppress other brain activity. Behavior becomes uncontrolled and socially inappropriate.
Similarly, recent research suggests that loss of temporal lobe activity does not somehow suppress artistic creativity in some individuals. In this new study, researchers examined the medical records of 689 people with FTD or related disorders, looking for evidence of new or growing interest in artistic practice. A total of 17 people, or 2.5% of her FTD participants, found this change. Most of these people painted, but some also painted, sculpted, made pottery, made jewelry, and quilted. Although FTD may be associated with specific genes, none of these patients had a known genetic cause of dementia. Most of this group of artists have semantic or non-fluency variants of the disease, suggesting that FTD has profound effects on their temporal lobes.
see or speak
Researchers then chose people to compare with this art group. One set included FTD patients who resembled artists in many respects (diagnosis, age, gender, educational background, etc.) but did not exhibit artistic inclinations. An additional group was demographically matched (in age, gender, education, and other factors) to the artists, but without dementia or serious health concerns.
The research team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare these three groups of people. Importantly, brain scans revealed that FTD patients had reduced volume in the left temporal lobe, a region critical for speech production, compared to healthy subjects. The atrophy was more pronounced in the artistic group than in the non-artistically inclined group.
Scientists also found that some brain regions are relatively larger among artists with FTD. In particular, individuals with smaller temporal lobes had greater volume in the dorsomedial occipital lobe, a region involved in visual association, compared with FTD patients who did not receive artistic activity. This finding implies that this visual cortex was enhanced while the temporal lobe was impaired by FTD. In addition, there was also a relative increase in volume of the part of the motor cortex that controls right hand movement among visual artists with FTD. In fact, the greater the volume of the dorsomedial occipital lobe, the greater the volume of this motor cortex.
Combining the evidence, the researchers concluded that the disease’s effects on the temporal lobe may reduce control over brain regions that produce visual associations. As a result, creative drive is unleashed. On the other hand, the increased volume of brain regions controlling the right hand probably reflects the use of the right hand in creating art.
The researchers confirmed these ideas by observing changes in an individual’s brain as FTD progresses and creativity emerges. A positron emission tomography scan measured how much energy was being used in different areas of her brain. Comparing her brain scans showed that as the woman’s dementia progressed, her frontal and temporal lobes became significantly less active, and areas involved in vision-related activities became more active.
A new study suggests that in the healthy brain, the temporal lobe directly or indirectly inhibits activity in the dorsomedial occipital lobe that supports visual association. But why do parts of the brain involved in language processing suppress visual areas? suggests that there is
This insight is, in fact, at the heart of a hypothesis about how our brains changed over the course of human evolution: the “superior visual perception hypothesis.” Sight takes so much of our brain’s computing power that we often close our eyes to focus on what we hear: music, conversation, birds chirping, crashing waves. Evolutionary hypotheses suggest that when our species first began to develop language, the brain diverted computational power from visual processing to support this new activity.
For example, visual processing helps us understand gestures, a form of non-verbal communication that presumably preceded the use of language. Since the computational tasks supporting the generation and interpretation of gestures were also associated with speech, gestures lost their dominance in communication as we became more proficient in language. Brain regions responsible for gestures may have been taken over by brain regions used for speech through an evolutionary process called exodus, in which parts of the organism assumed different or entirely new roles.
This hypothesis may explain why regions involved in language processing somehow suppress activities associated with visual thinking. A new FTD study suggests that, in some ways, this evolutionary process has not been undone in artists with dementia.
budding artist
Brain injuries and neurodegenerative diseases often have tragic consequences. It is therefore worth noting that these conditions can have seemingly positive effects, such as increased creativity, and this finding helps us understand the origins of innovation. Creativity is part of human nature and in some ways distinguishes us from our human relatives. Is it possible that there is an artist hiding within all of us waiting for an accidental appearance?
Creativity is a complex behavior that requires several components, including the ability to think divergently and symbolically, persistence despite uncertainty, execution skills, and the ability to evaluate one’s creations. All these factors need to be weighed when considering the occasional surge in artistic activity in FTD. In general, people with FTD do poorly on tests of divergent thinking. This suggests that the group of artists with this disorder is quite different from other individuals with her FTD, or that different aspects of creativity are somehow enhanced in FTD artists. Other studies have found that aesthetic judgments are retained in the FTD, allowing affected people to assess the strength of the finished artwork, but many find the emotional content of the visual arts I’m having a hard time recognizing it.
Past research has also demonstrated that relaxing self-critical thinking can lead to creativity. In FTD, the lack of self-censorship contributes to socially inappropriate behavior, for example, and could also mean that the artist’s “inner critic” is not speaking up. Another aspect of artistic success is practice. FTD is often accompanied by relentless behavior, repeating the same actions or sayings, or becoming preoccupied with certain thoughts or actions. Some scientists propose that FTD artists benefit from a combination of behavioral restraint and repetitive practice. In fact, it may also help explain the literary work of poetic people, who, unlike visual art people with FTD, have spared significant loss of their temporal lobe language areas.
Still, none of these ideas fully explain the flourishing of artistic behavior in some FTD patients. The authors of the new study emphasize that FTD artists represent only a fraction of the total number of people with dementia sampled. Other factors may also be important, such as the environment and circumstances conducive to artistic endurance and creative pursuits.
FTD artists may be at the center of the perfect creative storm. Studies of these people can therefore reveal subtle interactions between brain regions that manifest in salient behavior. The complexity of creativity makes it even more implausible that such abilities could be the result of neurodegeneration. Ultimately, these findings are a humble reflection of the adaptability and seemingly limitless capabilities of the human brain.
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This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. Scientific American.
