Customer Reviews

The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius

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A very engaging book that looks at the components of creativity and the characteristics of a creative person. It becomes clear that creativity is not always appreciated until sometime after the idea itself. Mendel and Copernicus were never classed as creative until after their death. The artist van Gogh was not considered creative until others deemed him to be so. To me, one of the most fascinating chapters is the link between creative genius and socially labelled 'madness'. There appears to be a link between eccentricity, psychiatric disorders and moments of brilliance. Does the brain need some 'disorganisation' before it reorganises the data in a different and unique way to create a genius idea? This and many aspects of creativty are discussed. Whether you are a student of intelligence and thinking, or whether you are curious as to why you or others think differently, then you will throughly enjoy this book by a very clever author who got a PhD in Renaissance English literature before becoming a psychiatrist. That blend of background alone should alert you to a fascinating read. You will learn that intelligence does not make you creative. As a bonus, she even gives you a chapter on how to think creatively yourself. I'd love to have a long lunch with Dr Andreasen.

The objective of this review is to critique and summarize this book for educational purposes: I am taking Introductory Neuroscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology and was assigned to find a book with a topic of interest that pertains to the science of the brain, read it, and summarize my thoughts on it. The topic of creativity is of extreme interest to me and would rather be creative than "book-smart." Overall, the book was easy to read and interesting, although I did find it to be a very surface level introduction into the science of creativity.
The Creative Brain begins with an introduction to what creativity is and is measured in terms of originality, utility (how useful the creation is), and its final product. Author Nancy Andreasen colorfully describes many instances of creative thinking at work, from the moment a person obtained a stone and realized its potential use as a tool, to the creation of beautiful and awe-inspiring masterpieces of artists. What separates these people from others that give them extraordinary creativity that only a handful of individuals possess? According to the author creativity is found and further enriched in terms of nature and nurture. One possible example of "hereditary" creativity is the Huxley family. Thomas Henry Huxley was a notable English biologist. His grandson Julian Huxley was an anthropologist who worked on the theory of evolution. Andrew Huxley was a distinguished physiologist who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on neural impulses and muscle contraction. Aldous Huxley was a novelist who famously wrote Brave New World in 1932. One possible example of nurtures influence on creativity is, as the author describes, the cradle of creativity. The cradle of creativity explains why there exists certain periods of time when creative contributions occur in clusters and then disappear for years after: a nurturing environment, rich in artistic or scientific thinking, are conducive to producing creative outcomes. One such example is the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the U.S. Inventions like the cotton gin, telegraph, telephone, light bulb, assembly line, and airplane all occurred within a relatively short period of time. Ultimately though, creativity is a product of nature AND nurture, genetics AND environment. An example of this was Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti. These two artists were raised in households with no exposure to art but both displayed a unique ability towards art (nature). Eventually, both were taught and reared by artistic masters who helped these young artists cultivate and train their artistic abilities (nurture). The book also discusses the relationship that exists between creative genius and mental illness. Because creative people view the world with an unbiased point of view they are able to make connections that are otherwise non-existent in normal people. But this same unbiased point of view can sometimes be vulnerable to connections that are dangerous or incorrect. Take mathematic genius John Nash who displayed schizotypal behavior at the age of thirty. He has been quoted saying "the ideas that I have about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did, so I took them seriously."
The book gives many examples of different types of creativity and is well organized in thought and structure. Because of her background knowledge in fine arts she offers a lot of knowledge on creative artists. The language used by the author is very easy to understand and it is obvious that she is very passionate about her studies in creativity because it makes the book that much more interesting to read. Most of the studies cited in this book are anecdotal because of the subjective ways creativity can be measured. Andreasen herself has conducted her own studies of creativity through the Iowa Writer's Workshop Study. One of the aspects of the book I found to be less interesting was the last chapter which describes what can be done to increase creativity in adults and infants. For adults, it described mental exercises like learning new things and meditation (that's right, meditation!). For children, it had recommendations like limiting the time available to watch television, interactive reading, and emphasizing diversity and curiosity in the young mind. It was written as if these were the steps that would guarantee a more creative individual. It was particularly obnoxious to learn the tips for increasing an infants' creativity levels because it reminded me of the movie "Nanny Diaries" where a baby-sitter works for a rich family that insists French culture, organic food and museum visits are necessary to raise their young son. Whatever happened to the traditional ideas of childhood like climbing trees, playing with your Sega Genesis game console, and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? Ultimately, the last chapter read to me like a self-help/new age themed pamphlet whose objective is to create baby geniuses in five simple steps (!).
Overall, the book was a very interesting read and I would recommend it for people new to the arena of neuroscience and creative thinking. One of my favorite quotes from the book is that:
"A child who reads a book about Robin Hood or Harry Potter is learning to visualize and imagine for herself... once shown to her on film... instead of the many Harrys occurring in the minds of children, there is now one "standard Harry" that will passively adopt rather than create on their own. As Darwin has pointed out, evolution thrives on variation."
The author has a colorful way of describing situations throughout the book that make the actual task of reading it, fly by.

"The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius", by Nancy Andreasen, Plume Book, NY 2006. ISBN 0-432-28781-2. PC 197/181 pages includes Preface, Biblio., and Index plus 33 photos/Illus. 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" (Prev. publ. as "The Creating Brain")

A delightful, informative and instructive book for anyone interested in or charged with task of optimal nurturing human potential. Dr. Andreasen, PhD (Lit.) also psychiatrist MD, addresses the nature of creativity, tackles the co-existence of genius and insanity issue, queries what creates the creative brain and as denouement, expounds upon building better brains.

The clarity of her writing, reviews of literary material on creativity, presentation of findings of her own research links between creativity and insanities, and concise up-to-date reviews of neuroscience anatomy and revelations provided by mMRI, sMRI and fMRI observations is excellent for both scientist and non-scientists. She concludes on techniques to maximize nurturing to enhance maximum potential of inherent creativity in a manner clearly timely (TV, urbanism, etc.) in a manner pleasureable to read. Having read more than a dozen books devoted to definition and origin of genius/gifted/creative children, this book stands singularly as an excellent read that is both timely and not in need of glossaries for jargon terminology. The inclusion of 'life-changing exercises for your brain' is sufficient reason to read this treatise.

The Creative Brain is an ambitious book that attempts to understand how creativity is supported and enabled by the human brain. While the beginning chapters of this book are quite interesting, by the later ones Dr. Andreason dispenses with the empiracle approach and instead she commences a less-satisfying portion of the book that is all anecdotal.
In the past few months I have read a lot of material on the brain, from the writings of Roger Sperry (Noble prize 1981), to "Inside The Brain" (mostly about brain damage) and "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins. (Best one in my opinion).
In the interest of full disclosure, I worked on the psychiatric unit on 2JPE where Dr. Andreason conducted her studies of unmedicated schizophrenics. She is indeed talented but I felt sad for her after I finished this brief book. There really is not yet enough evidence to support her thesis. For that reason, I found the latter two thirds of this book to be disappointing. She did attempt some interesting studies of the writers at the Iowa Writer's Workshop but those studies--apparently, from this book--did not really gell into firm conclusions. Surely, she found some linkages between creative people and the incidence of mental illness but I do not find them conclusive. Being a writer and painter myself, I was hoping for some empiracle and definitive evidence here but I did not find it.

It is a bit disconcerting to purchase a book and find that it has previously been sold. with another title(which I had already purchased and read). Is this ethical?

T E Simpson

I recommend this book to people who would like an introduction to the neuroscience of creativity. The author is an MD, who has a PhD in English Renaissance Literature. Despite the complex nature of the topic, straddling arts and science, the book was an effortless, breezy read but I had to go back and reread my marked/highlighted lines and pages, to commit them to some alcove in my brain.
So, what did I gain from reading this book? Some insights, such as:
* "...most creative people are smart but don't have to be extremely smart. An IQ around 120 is good enough...except for scientists."
* "Personality traits that define the creative individual include openness to experience, adventuresomeness, rebelliousness, individualism, sensitivity, playfulness, persistence, curiosity and simplicity."
* The key components of the creative people: 1. Slip into a state of intense concentration and focus. 2. The muse sits on my shoulder. 3. Prone to have a wandering mind, flooded with ideas and thoughts and a tendency not to censor them. 4. Disengaged, dispassionate observers, and seem aloof, detached and even coldhearted, at times.
* "During the creative process the brain begins by disorganizing, making links between shadowy forms of objects or symbols or words or remembered experiences that have not been previously linked. Out of this disorganization, self-organization eventually emerges and takes over in the brain." (Shades of Chaos Theory!).
* How the brain's self-organization process, when done right can lead to a new idea or creativity. Done wrong, it can lead to psychosis. There is a correlation between genius and insanity, between creativity in children and the rate of mental illness in biological parents.
* Environments that cradle and nurture creativity. (Please read the book for the list)
* Reiteration of neuroplasticity and prime times for learning in life.
The book's examples are from people in liberal arts, including Iowa Writer's Workshop, but they immediately spark ideas and correlations to individuals in other domains. I had some personal insights regarding my own experience in writing An Indian in Cowboy Country. An Indian in Cowboy Country: Stories from an Immigrant's Life

This book was a boring reading. It didn't stand the author's distinguished career nor as a good science writing. It may help to educate very novices on brain science as a whole. But it failed to give a solid answer to its main premise - where does the creativity lie in brain's multivaried structure. This book though gives some very important examples from extremely creative people's experiences, "moments of epiphanies". It mentions what Mozart, Poincare or similar person's description of their individual feelings when they were on the verge of some creative thought. On the whole this books failed to explain how and why geniuses are geniuses, but has not forgotten to mention that the author herself was a genius (at least twice in the book). Better books are by Edelman, Koch and Crick's books on conciousness.

Andreasen offers a great sourcebook introducing the history of research concerned with the nature and nurturing of creativity and genius. Written in clearly accessible language for the average reader, this volume explores what is known (and currently knowable ?) about famous artists, musicians and scientists, the possible environmental circumstances facilitating their creative genius, and the putative neurological brain developments which supported their creative behaviours. Perhaps a little disappointing in its inability to truly reveal the underlying neural basis of creativity, the book is nonetheless valuable for its concluding chapter's inclusion of several 'mental exercises for adults', and the even better section concerned with 'tips for teaching tots', with a view to parents and teachers enhancing the individual creativity of very young children.
The early historical reviews and landmarking of the key writings concerned with hereditary genius was welcome (and well referenced for those unfamiliar with this literature), but surprisingly, does not greatly extend Galton's claims and conclusions of 100+ years ago to become within easy reach of a new and detailed understanding of the neural basis of creative genius. The author's own 'clinical' research contribution to the empirical parts of the thesis presented in this book would appear to be largely confined to her finding of a significant correlation to exist between creativity and instances of hereditary mental illness, and in particular, with both personal and familial mood disorders. That experience itself, plus proactive sensory and motor opportunity combined with the autoregulatory cognitive processing that supports determination of the significance of objects, event and experiences gives rise to changes in brain structure (and thus the potential development of individual brains capable of increasing levels of creativity), is an important omission and left to the reader to work out for him/herself.
More transparent perhaps are the listed correlate personal characteristics and lifestyle opportunity choices found common to many an acknowledged creative genius. Plotted biographical information as available from previous accounts (although often anecdotal), have afforded Andreasen to compile a useful, if non-exhaustive, typical creative personality profile, and some correlate environmental opportunities and circumstances often seen to support its expression. Many readers will undoubtedly enjoy identifying the existence of their own genius potential as determinable by their possession of certain identifiable personality-trait indicators, the most significant of which appear to include clearly abnormal social lives, sustained attention to differential detail, prolonged and self-motivated concentration, good working memory, which, together with a wealthy patron/funding body (if not poverty) and the ability to work alone for protracted periods of time with little/no sleep may well help you towards your first novel product or discovery !
The author's attempts to outline the neural basis of creativity and genius begins with a great primer on neuro-anatomy (Ch.3), but unfortunately is not extended to describe what she believes 'the creative brain 'to look like (in contrast to those of less creative people, which the current reviewers predict will show quite different patterns of neural connectivity, plasticity potential, and network density distributions). A further irritation is seen with Andreasen's allowing the language of early stimulus reception to become confused with the language of experiential perception (and other conceptualisations of cognitive processing), when describing neural circuit activity transmission pathways. A similar effect occurs again in the later functional neurobiological section when returning to discuss 'building better brains' (Ch. 6). For example, we read that in certain parts of the cerebral cortex "the sounds and words are connected to their associated memories and given meaning", and again later that "Because the eye was unable to see, the visual cortex did not grow properly". Although perhaps wishing to avoid the more technically-correct vocabulary and conceptual conciseness of modern cognitive neuroscience, the choice of relatively colloquial language employed here may serve to confuse rather than elucidate the functional brain mechanisms underlying an especially less well defined behaviour such as creativity. The very few extant neurological imaging data studies discussed here showing clear brain-structure differences with expertise will be familiar to many readers (London taxi-drivers are possessed of enlarged hippocampi with increasing experience and use of memory related to spatial-awareness, and male professional orchestral musicians showing increased grey matter in their Broca's area), but the specific way(s) in which the brains of creative genii differ from those less profligate in their output, remains elusive, both in terms of gross descriptive functional detail and developmental ontology. We would at least expect to have found Andreasen's predictions with respect to the kinds of brain connections and pathway developments that might conceivably result from exposure to particular learning strategy experiments, perceptual affordances, personal interpretive experiences, and/or environmental exploration opportunities as may correlate with creativity and giftedness (if not genius).
Still wishing to recommend this book, we applaud the section in the final chapter concerned with providing a selection of helpful tips and environmental enrichment ideas for fostering the increased likelihood of a given child attaining (if not actually demonstrating) enhanced creative talent, as may be expressed in any number of significant ways. To list a few as based upon the personality profiles and associated environmental opportunities available to the historical geniuses previously discussed in the earlier chapters, such simple tips include, for example, not stifling curiosity (otherwise highly correlated with creativity), engaging collaboratively with your child in investigatory projects, visibly modeling (as a parent) the activities of reading and engaging in homework-like behaviors within the home, and using 'direct observation' of nature (rather than relying solely on book and video/TV-based reference materials) for fact-finding missions.
Indeed, these and many other attributes of the life histories of the creative geniuses of past eras have much to exemplify for us all, as role models, the potential significance of life-style choices and our sensitivity to observable/discoverable environmental opportunities that may result in the development of the kinds of brains likely to support each our own enhanced creativity. This is all the more interesting given that we currently remain largely in the dark with regards the way(s) in which the specific brain structures required to support extraordinary creativity can, and do, develop and change their structure within the span of an individual human lifetime.

Dr. Tony Dickinson & Claire Kan
Academic Research Laboratory, Global Choice Psychometric, HK.

Neuroplasticity is a rather new concept, formerly a taboo in the neuroscience realm, which has caused a lot of excitement. The idea that the brain is not hardwired and can adapt it self has many exciting implications. As the brain is the central command center for our body it takes the credit for many of our qualities good or bad. As children grow up, in early years of childhood it is not uncommon for relatives or parents to use the term "smart" to describe them. This may be as a result of putting together a house from Lego's or putting a puzzle together. The ability to see something that does not exist yet but has the potential of being created is called creativity. Where does this so called "creativity" come from? Are we born with it, in other words is it a part of our "Nature"? Or is it routed in our upbringing or in other words our "Nurture"? Are there ways of enhancing our creativity or is it dictated to us by our genes? How can we find out?

This book offers an extensive investigation into the rout of creativity. Primarily a method of study is chosen in which a group of highly creative people are compared with a group of ordinary people. The study compares different aspects of the people's lives in order to find the rout of creativity. Other case studies on famous people through out history who have contributed masterpieces as a result of their creativity have been preformed. These include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Peter Tchaikovsky, Henri Poincare, Friedrich Kekule, Stephen Spender, etc. Another subject that the book covers is the relationship between genius and insanity. There are many cases of genius individuals who have had great contributions but they have developed some mental illness such as schizophrenia. One of such is John Nash the great mathematician and Nobel Prize receiver. He developed schitzotypal traits early in life and developed a psychosis at age thirty. His son also suffers from schizophrenia. Other examples of this nature are presented in the book. In search of finding a definitive relationship between genius and insanity the book reviews studies that have been preformed which address this issue. One of these studies by Havelock Ellis is "A Study of British Genius" in which a statistical approach has been taken towards the issue of genius and insanity. Finally in the last chapter the book delves into neuroplasticity and after giving a brief description of it, the book explores the relationship between plasticity and development of the creative brain. Finally the book explains how mental exercises can take advantage of the plasticity of the brain. Especially in adults as the age increases the brains sharpness tends to dull. The mental exercises explained in the book help to fight off this phenomenon.

One of the more interesting sections of the book for me was the description of the creative process. The book presents a brief description of the creative process by famous people who have great creative contributions, in their own words. On of such is one of the most famous descriptions of the creative process written by the nineteenth-century Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Kubla Khan: Or, A vision in a dream which is considered his finest piece. In the following Coleridge explains how he came to write this piece:
"The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external sense, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from 200-300 lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, with out any sensation or consciousness of effort."
As Coleridge awakes from this dream he manages to write 54 lines semi-automatically but then is disturbed by a task he must perform as a result of a phone call. On the returning he can not capture the other 200-300 lines he wrote in his dream.

Nancy C. Andreasen, M.D. and PhD in English Renaissance literature is the chair of psychiatry at the University of Iowa. In this book she takes on the issue of "Creativity" in many different aspects. Through statistical studies she compares personality traits of extraordinarily creative people. Also through these case studies she delves into finding the rout of creativity and its relationship with insanity. The book reviews studies that aim at isolating "Nurture" and "Nature" in order to present a well defined explanation. From a sociological prospect she concludes that with out "Nurture" many creative minds might not have the opportunity to flourish. She well defines properties of an environment fertile for creativity. Indeed Dr. Andreasen's opening line for her book "To the lost Geniuses of the past, in the hope that this book will help more thrive in the future" has been fulfilled!

I think the author's intention in this book was to use pieces from English literature as case studies in her explanations about creativity. However, these cases dominate the book to an extent that discussions about psychological and neuroscientific explanations of creativity become less important. The book deviates from its promised topic.

I offer the following recommendations to the author to improve this book:
1) Do not use only English literature pieces as case studies for creativity. Scientists, engineers, philosophers, architects, craftsman etc. can also be creative. Try to enrich the book by using examples from different fields. You might be an ex-professor of English literature but not all of your readers are students of English literature (I bet most of them are not).

2) Creativity is not limited to the Western world. You only refer to artists, authors, poets etc. from Europe and North America, who have lived since the Renaissance. Try to read and learn about Chinese or Arabic poetry for example. Your narrow perception of creativity without any cultural variations becomes quite boring in this book.

3) It is not necessary to distinguish ordinary creativity from extra ordinary creativity when we are talking about the nature of creativity. Your criteria for making this distinction are quite subjective. There might be a genius cook (an example given for ordinary creativity in the book) whose creativity can be as extraordinary as Einstein's creativity. You seem to make this distinction based on the product. I do not agree that product is an essential element in creativity (unlike what the book claims). Idea generation, by itself, is a creative process which may or may not end up with the production of a tangible element.

4) The idea of learning something novel just for the sake of having a mind exercise is horrible. I can't imagine trying to learn Chinese without any internal motivation, just because I want to practice with my brain.