From the Workshop Study

As happened yesterday, on my way to work this morning I witnessed a most glorious sky. Different today, from yesterday. Yesterday, as I crossed the Auckland Harbour Bridge the mist was roiling and rolling over the water of the harbour in strands and banks of various density. Piercing through the mist in places were broad bands of golden sunlight, and at one point the large golden orb of the sun was visible through a break in the clouds. It was dangerous enough looking (S will growl when she reads this; she thinks I spend too much time looking elsewhere than at the road when I'm driving), I certainly couldn't take a photo.

This morning there was no mist, and I was slightly earlier, so there was more red in the sky. A different beauty to that of yesterday, although equally worthy of assigning a place in the memory banks.

Work today was a mixture of fascinating (challenging clinical problems to solve), satisfying (making a real difference to someone), and frustrating (literally hours spent arranging appropriate care only to have it all overturned by 'the system'). Hardly paused in the time I was there before coming home.

Only home briefly before meeting up with the rest of my Peer Review Group. We went to a lecture By Professor Nancy Andreason (ex-President of the American Psychiatric Association amongst many other honours) on the brain correlates of creativity. The University of Auckland has established a Creativity Fellowship, and a cross department/discipline interest group and research group into creativity. Professor Andreason is the first invited Creative Fellow to the University and this was her first public lecture since arriving in Auckland.

Her more recent work on brain imaging and creativity provides evidence that the association areas of the brain are much more active during various "creative thinking" tests in people described as creative when matched with "non-creative" IQ-matched controls. In her early days as a psychiatric researcher, she had responded to a challenge that her PhD in literature (gained prior to going to Medical School) was more than irrelevant, it was useless, by investigating a possible link between mental disorder and creativity.

She postulated that there would be no connection between mental disorder and creativity, and that there would be an excess of mental disorder in the first degree relatives of creative persons (largely writers, obtained from a writers' workshop). As this slide shows, Mood Disorders were significantly more common in the writers than in the IQ matched controls. First degree relatives, also had an excess of mood disorders.

There was some discussion about which way is the connection. Does creativity lead to mood disorder? Does mood disorder come out as creativity? Perhaps a better question would be; are creative persons able to contain and usefully use active and frequent associations between different parts of the brain, which active associations when not contained can be expressed as mood and/or thought disorders (the latter being more in the realm of schizophrenia)?

All very interesting. Sadly the auditorium was only half full.

Afterwards the four of us retired to a nearby hostelry for beer, food and continued peer review discussion. A great evening.