Dementia
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Dementia and creativity are related:
- Bruce Miller and his coworkers studied the emergence of artistic talents that coincided with a form of dementia called, frontal temporal lobar atrophy, or frontotemporal dementia. Despite their dementia, the patients continued to utilize and even enhance their artistic skills, as seen through their means of painting. The explanation for the continued artistic skills is that the dementia’s location on the brain may have a particular effect. The left side of the brain is mainly associated with verbal activities and the right side seems to be important for visual spatial skills, which are essential in painting. Since most of Miller’s patients with dementia only had degeneration in the left side of the brain, the right side’s visual spatial skills were saved. Although this description of dementia and its effect on the brain describes the maintenance of painting and other visual spatial artistic abilities, it does not explain why dementia seems to enhance these same abilities.
- One possible explanation involves inhibition of the brain. If one side of the brain is degenerate, it no longer has the ability to inhibit the other side of the brain. This, in turn, would mean that there would be no inhibition on the other side of the brain and allow for a seemingly greater emphasis on the abilities of that side. However, this finding does not mean that this degenerative process, in respect to dementia, directly leads to an enhancement of creativity. This inability to localize the association is because Miller and his coworkers could not test how the disinhibition process worked within their participants. However, when doctors remove the left temporal lobe, there is no noticeable artistic increase in the patients.
- One cannot simply reject the disinhibition hypothesis because of this evidence since experimental tests have not been done to confirm the rejection. Ultimately, despite the current evidence about the relationship between creativity and frontotemporal dementia, the painting can be viewed as a skill, rather than something derived from creativity. Additionally, Miller did not find enough evidence to prove that this particular type of dementia leads to an increase of creativity.
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Brooke Birrenkott 01:13, 8 June 2006 (PDT)
