Creativity in Psychiatry with Dr. Robert Bilder

 

Robert Bilder: I think that, the arts give us a unique window to aspects of ourselves, to our internal workings, to our affective states, our emotional states, our internal visceral states that we often don’t have the time, space, or opportunity to reflect on. so I think that the arts enable us to connect to parts of ourselves. I. That are really important and often neglected.

Guest Introduction

Bruce Bassi: welcome to the Future of Psychiatry podcast, where we explore novel technology and new innovations in mental health.

I’m your host, Dr. Bassi, an addiction physician and biomedical engineer. Today we’re with Dr. Robert Builder. He’s a clinical neuropsychologist and has been actively engaged in over 20 years research on the neuro anatomic and neurophysiological basis mental illnesses. He has received many awards for his research contributions.

Served on diverse federal and international advisory boards, provided editorial service to many scholarly journals received multiple grants from the NIH foundations and industry. His work has been presented in more than a hundred publications and 300 scientific presentations. the director of the Tenenbaum Center of For the Biology of Creativity and Holds the Tenenbaum Family Chair and creativity research position.

Welcome Dr. Builder

Robert Bilder: Hi there. Thanks for having me.

Bruce Bassi: the bass and the guitar and the background. Definitely set the scene, set the stage for you and who you are. But I’d like to get to know you and how you got interested in the, of creativity with treatment of mental illness.

Robert Bilder: my involvement in creativity research was really somewhat serendipitous. the, director of the Semial Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Peter Whybrow got together with a philanthropist, Michael Tenenbaum, and they decided they wanted to do something fun and interesting, decided it would be great to out a call for research on the neuroscience of creativity.

We’re well known at the Semi Institute for doing neuroscientific studies of various other kinds of brain functions, including mental illnesses. but there had really not been a, focus on, creativity in the brain. I in a proposal to study certain brain features associated with creativity, and then over time became more and more interested in that, and was fortunate enough to receive an endowed chair from the Tenenbaum family, in order to facilitate. My study of creativity in the brain. So it’s been a lot of, fun and very lucky for me to be able to do so

Does Creativity Diminishes Because of Mental Illness?

Bruce Bassi: When an individual experiences mental illness, be it depression, anxiety, is it safe to say their level of creativity diminishes? is it that simple or is it more nuanced than that?

Robert Bilder: well. Slightly more nuanced than that, but, there’s I would say qualifies as a myth Creativity and madness go together. exciting though. That concept is, and it’s easy to bring to mind examples of people who were exceptionally, extraordinarily creative and also happen to have mental illnesses. like the nature of that association has been often exaggerated and basically it’s not good to have a mental illness. When people do experience what we now define as mental illnesses, then typically their creativity will be impacted adversely. they will not be more creative. there’s some really interesting findings that suggest that probably is some kind of a genetic link between. The vulnerability to certain kinds of mental illness and creativity. it looks like that people who are what we call the first degree relatives, people who are just one at one remove, from people with diagnoses of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, to have more creativity. so it looks like, indeed there probably are shared genes that both give you an increased vulnerability. To have mental illness and enable you to be more creative. But in some people there are protective factors as well. In fact, probably in most people, that keep them from going over the edge into suffering mental illness. for those people, they probably are more creative. But for those who, do go over the edge, then suffer decreases in creativity and mental illness.

Robert Bilder: I use this term over the edge and I hope I’m not being too glib in using that. the reason I re refer to that concept is because we had paper some years back, where we described, creativity as being on the edge of chaos. And there the core idea is that our thinking and our brain activation states all exist. In a range of different patterns of organization, some of which are very stable, some of which are less stable and, but more flexible. So you can see there are pros and cons. On the one hand, stability is seen as a good thing, but rigidity is not seen as a good thing. So if you’re too stable, then the consequences will be rigidity.

On the other hand, flexibility is considered a good thing, but chaos. Would be the extreme of flexibility and complete unpredictability, may not be advantageous. So, some great thinkers, including Stuart Kaufman, who studied complexity theory, talked about the regime and the chaotic regime, and then in between those two is a boundary that he called the edge of chaos. it can be argued, I think, successfully that many aspects of creativity and other processes like evolution, can be explained by seeing how emotion from the ordered regime into the chaotic regime and towards it, but not over the edge. at the edge of chaos near that boundary, that’s where novel things occur. But things that are also connected closely enough to the stable regime that they can be useful and productive.

Bruce Bassi: So it sounds like, most things in our field, it exists on a spectrum and we’re trying to weigh the risk benefit, pros and cons of being too far towards one end of the spectrum and see how we can, Get to the middle in a way, um, to utilize that, to our advantage, that process or that metric.

in diagnosing and treating mental illness, do you think there’s some room there to creativity weigh in as kind of a measurement to helping us understand, maybe severity or, Maybe give insight into the treatment plan? For that individual. or is too variable among individuals based on their set point or interest in, creative works and whatnot.

Robert Bilder: Yeah, it’s a fascinating point. And know, I’m not sure it’s been as fully explored as it might be. think that, um, are a number of things you said that are, you know, really important. One of that. having to do with dimensional versus categorical approaches to mental illness altogether. and I’m a big fan of dimensional approaches and a harsh critic of categorical approaches. And not that the categorical approaches may not be useful at times in certain settings, but I think that it’s rare that they’re actually useful. And I think categorical approaches have held back the science by giving us false categories actually impair our ability to find the biological basis of these things. And also it gives people the false impression that they may exist on one side of the boundary or other, and conceptualize themselves as Being mentally ill or mentally well for

that matter. and I think that those, classifications are, false and do us a disservice. So, the idea that we all exist on continua, and we all have strengths and weaknesses along those continuum, I think is definitely the reality. and not just a scientific concept. So almost everyone exists on a continuum from, you know, sadness through happiness. and the people in the lowest 10% or so of, you know, low positive emotion, tend to be depressed. to cross that, threshold, for having their functioning be impaired. but the implication of this is really profound because if we could move everybody up. Using, for example, positive psychology interventions or perhaps creativity boosting, interventions. all we would need to do would be to have people feel just noticeably better, a half of a standard deviation for the and statistical nerds out there. that subtle movement that’s just noticeable clinically would be enough to get rid of two thirds of all incident depression. It would make the rest of the people who weren’t at risk of being depressed much happier. The same thing is true for anxiety disorders, it’s a little bit more complicated with substance use disorders, but since they are probably also, very much linked to, anxiety and depressive disorders, I think that the same story also holds.

Bruce Bassi: It makes sense. You know, when I conceptualize mental illness, I think of . and very much, kind of in a CBT framework in many other schools of thought within psychiatry. Think of it this way, but we . Recognize that we get caught up in our own thought rehearsals, like a repeated thoughts that, are maladaptive and not helpful and we can’t seem to break out of those ruminating thoughts in some way.

And we think, truth about our own thoughts because they’re coming from us. And for me, I see a clear link here to using, flexibility. Tactics, strategies, strategies that would boost the individual’s level of flexibility to think outside the box and problem solve. And I think there’s even type of therapy called problem solving therapy and to help work with this.

And I, can see how, one is linked to the other, why the creative works would be so important to treating mental illness. I would love to hear your thoughts as to why it’s important.

Robert Bilder: Yeah, there, a number of really fascinating points that I think are directly related to what you’re describing. And one thing that, may not be, familiar with is whole theory that involves the broadening and narrowing of attentional control and, I think that it’s gotten probably the best, done research in the contemplative sciences as they’re now called.

But basically from, from folks studying meditation practices and trying to understand those, There are two kinds of meditation that have been identified since ancient Tibetan times. one of which is called focused meditation, and which involves the narrowing of attention to a particular element, like a mantra or a mandala or something, or one’s own breath, to try to keep attention focused on that and not to attend to other things. And then there’s, discursive meditation practice, which is the broadening of attention Now. Interestingly enough, there’s a great, scientist at UCLA whose name is Lobsang Rap, who’s a good friend as well. I’ve known for a number of years, and he pointed out to me that while most of our Western meditation practices focused on broadening of attention, learned Tibet, before he was the Ayurvedic physician to his Holiness the Dalai Lama, he said they had to learn first focused attention. And only after they’ve mastered that and sometimes they never mastered that and they quit if they could master the focal attention, then they would learn broadening of attention. It was only after they’d mastered focal attention that they were permitted to go on to do broadening of attention.

But here’s the key thing, they did them at the same time, so they would maintain focused attention while broadening attention. And I think that this reflects exactly the process that I was trying to refer to before about the balancing of stability and flexibility to be there near the edge of chaos. I think as you out, and I think it’s quite true, times we get Sort of trapped into an overly stable regime where we may be rehearsing, or stuck in our thought patterns, stuck in maladaptive thought patterns, and find it difficult to break out of those. You know, we may be trapped into loops that are, um, dominated by certain reward seeking, or, pain avoiding, stimulation. And so we may have patterns that have been adaptive. and we should, know, treat ourselves well. that, you know, all of us are just trying to get by. but, sometimes we learn habits and get stuck in habits that are not, for us. So many times people can benefit from introducing flexibility and moving themselves. Up in that direction towards the more flexible. and I think that’s where, the, broadening of attention exercises and other creativity, promoting exercises, can be, helpful. also worth noting that separately from the meditation stuff, there have been many studies of attentional control that show that if you. Get people to broaden their attention. They become less anxious just by increasing their attention to peripheral cues, and have a broader sensitivity to, outside world. rationale for this to come from evolution, where in the presence of threat. Our attention becomes narrowed to what is probably the threatening thing in the environment. And, we have to figure out whether we’re gonna flee, fight, And, decisions have to be made rapidly and it requires that one pay very close attention. However, with more subtle stimulation, our attention may actually broaden. We become more sensitive to all the things in the environment. are a variety of ways to develop practices that can broaden attention. and, appear to be effective anxiolytics. and, engagement in creative pursuits may similarly promote that kind of increased cognitive flexibility.

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Bruce Bassi: One tactic or strategy that I’ve heard of to . essentially broaden attention would be to sit somewhere. It doesn’t have to be anywhere in particular. It could be a forest or nature. And try to list five things from each sense that you’re in. You know, and the obvious ones that you start off with and then you’re like, oh yeah, there actually is a sound that I didn’t even pay attention to that I was.

Just glossing over, of some animal or some bird or, leaves moving across other leaves, like things that, are just going on in our background that our default mode just like kind of xs out. was a cool, exercise for me because, our brain is really good at, not focusing on things that doesn’t really think are important. is that one of those strategies or can you expand upon a few more for us?

Robert Bilder: that sounds like a, lovely, approach. and I think that our sensory world is so full of information that we’re seldom focused upon. Usually we narrow our attention to focus on just one particular thing, but by broadening one’s attention, it is possible to pick up. So many different elements. I guess one, thing that may be worth noting is that some of the contemplative practices share the, idea that when one’s attention is drawn to a particular external stimulus, one should, develop the technique to not Label it or, categorize it, but to just let it pass or to quickly categorize it, say, oh yes, that was a sound. usually what we find when we let our mind relax is that our attention back to worries or troubles. it’s particularly important that we acknowledge those as that’s just a thought that I had. It will pass. so I think that’s really important. Another key thing you’re talking about, the kind of practices that people can get into.

One thing I think is really valuable if you can find the way to do it, is to into a place where you really can broaden your attention and where you can see like a complete horizon. Many of us are trapped in. Environments that don’t permit a lot of, broadening of attention. I mean, we spend half of our lives now focused on humans that are, you know, two inches in little boxes on screens, So is probably increasing anxiety. In fact, I had given some talks where I talked about zad. ZAD Zoom associated delirium. A unique mental condition.

people who are spending five hours or more, on video conferences. I think develop a narrowing that’s counterproductive and it’s important to get out into the world.

And, that’s one thing about broadening of attention. Another interesting thing, when people have looked at the impact of the real world or the built environment on our psychological wellbeing, you probably have heard of, the effects of green space. and that, one marker of wellbeing is being close to a green thing, a living thing like a plant, not just a green screen or running water. these kinds of, natural, phenomena when people have studied that psychological processes. One fascinating thing, at least fascinating to me that. Some say that that may be mediated by the sense of being away. And so, the idea that it is not necessarily just being near something green or a living thing or near water or ocean, it’s making certain kinds of noises. uh, transports us to someplace that is. Different from where we are right now. It engenders a kind of mind traveling and you know, that kind of flexibility, may be particularly valuable if we can give people the sense of being away. That may be one of the critical ingredients in promoting wellbeing, and I think it does just what you were suggesting.

Take us away from the sort of mental traps that we tend to get stuck in, or the, uh, mental treadmills hamster wheels minds.

Bruce Bassi: so many good analogies. How do you get somebody to feel that they’re away? I know for me, when I feel stuck in a, particular trap, of difficulty, whether it’s school or family issues health issues, feel like you really can’t get out of that space and your whole kind of world is collapsing in on you.

Robert Bilder: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, in order to, promote. That kind of, you know, being away, it’s, not always easy. one has to have the motivation to be able to, remove oneself from particular environments that may be counterproductive. especially, in substance use and addiction, there is, Well studied, triggering by cues, that, may keep us stuck in those, mental loops. So if one can muster the energy to pull oneself out of that and actually physically remove oneself, for example, out to a point of nature, and make a decision to go and be away. That is, you know, one helpful thing to do. I’ve got buddies who work, in the tech industry who are creating virtual reality environments that, I think that we all hope will be successful in people to be transported. people vary in how, comfortable they are in those environments. I think there’s enormous promise there. and so that’s an area to, you know, keep watch over. and I think that, the most valuable are to build, and the most widely accessible, are mental practices that include, positive psychology practices like meditation practices, but then also to be in good psychotherapies, where, one can, develop the skills habits break out of the ruts and enable that openness to being away, and work on the underlying mental processes that keep us from experiencing being away regularly.

you may have heard of the author of Miha Sent Meha,

I like to say it because I feel like I can pronounce his name very well.

Bruce Bassi: You must have practiced that

Robert Bilder: I had, well, someone gave me a, a hint. a good colleague John Roso said, oh, you just have to remember cheeks sent me high. And if you start with cheek sent me high and then I tried to add a slight Eastern European flourish, to that I think it sounded good. And he said it was not bad. rest his soul. He passed away recently, but he’s, you know, was an amazing guy and he wrote, um, the. he was I think first person to really define flow, the flow state and wrote a beautiful book on creativity and, and several other works on creativity. he had a couple of tips for how to be more creative and I think it links also to, um, yourself to sense of being away and in increasing flexibility. He said every day you should try to surprise someone. And you should try to surprise yourself. and the latter is is very hard. it’s pretty easy to come up with a practice that, you know, you think, well, I gotta surprise somebody. but surprising yourself is, is not easy because it’s sort of like tickling yourself you’re always monitoring what you’re

doing and know what you intended to do. That’s why it’s hard to tickle yourself in the same way, it’s hard to surprise yourself. But, think you can do it. If you explicitly focus on doing things a little differently, you don’t have to be, you know, turning the world upside down. But, even if you’re, you know, heading to work, can you take three minutes to take a different route, go on a different street, a different way, know, try something new.

Technology It’s Telling Us What to Do

Bruce Bassi: Yeah, there was a lesson in the Waking Up app, which I love, Sam Harris’s app, and one of the lessons was about how rarely we do anything that’s not prepared already, like out to eat. We look at the reviews. Going to a place, we look at the Google Maps to figure out where we’re gonna go. Google search constantly, everything.

we’re never really going out and like exploring anything without any

preconceptions related to it. And that’s exactly what you’re describing. looking at a screen, we’re looking at a map, and we’re just kind of like robots following along with what

technology is telling us to do.

Robert Bilder: do. Yeah. And you know, we’re so habit driven. I mean. Audience members may occasionally get prompts from their phone or their car saying, oh, are you heading home? In fact, I remember I was at a talk once and there was a guy who had invented, some of the AI that was going along with the General Motors, OnStar systems, he was trying it out, and the car said to him, one Thursday afternoon. Said, Hey, John, it looks like you’re heading home. Should I put in another order for the pepperoni pizzas at Vinny’s tonight? he just found it so intrusive and annoying that he turned the thing off and killed part of the program. I think that, we are so driven by habit. Our, our physical location can usually be predicted.

I’ve heard estimates as high as 90% of the time. where we are can be predicted within a few feet. just by monitoring our, physical location for about a week, we’re so set in our ways.

So like, I like to think I’m a wild and crazy guy, but you know, the reality is I’m always doing exactly the same thing and

exactly. In place almost all the time. So breaking out of those habits is really interesting. And that’s why in our tenor bomb center for the, study of creativity, we focused on a number of underlying cognitive traits that we thought were really important for creativity. One of them is inhibition uh, response inhibition and, While many people think, oh yes, well you must be uninhibited or disinhibited in order to be creative. That’s true in part, but what we focused on is you have to be able to inhibit your habits. So in any particular situation, like let’s say, let me ask you, what’s me the names of, different animals as fast as you can.

Bruce Bassi: Squirrel dog. Oh, the names of the actual pets.

Oh.

Oh, . Alright. Squirrel. Dog. Horse, cow, rabbit.

Robert Bilder: Alright. That, that’s good enough. Now, those are probably not the most unusual animals. If I asked you to give me the names of exotic animals, or unusual animals, may take a little bit longer, but yeah, give me some unusual animals.

Bruce Bassi: I mean, I don’t know if a zebra is quite unusual enough. Dr. Aary, I think is one that’s on the p the mocha, can’t think of any

rare species I mean, pandas are rare for the us I was just reading an article on that, how we don’t own any pandas here. that’s exotic.

Robert Bilder: Well anyhow, you get the sense though, that it takes a little longer to come up with those, right? And you have to actually inhibit other. Kinds of selections and then

you can see you were even, you know, thinking, oh, well should it be a rare animal or just the name be a rare name for now.

when I did this test without specifying, they should look for unusual animals, studying the drummer Stewart Copeland, who, the drummer for the police. so Stewart, the first word to come outta his mouth is lemur. I said, really? That’s the first animal that come. You know, most people, it’s cat, dog, or lions, tigers. Bears is the Wizard of Oz effect. You know, these are the things that are queued up in our brain. So to get to the higher hanging fruit in the cognitive tree, you have to inhibit the low hanging stuff. And not say the first thing that comes to mind or not do the first thing that comes to mind. really putting a pause and thinking, oh, what do I really want to do? inhibiting the, initial action pre potent responses, the technical term of art, and doing something different.

That’s what’s, probably one of the keys to creativity.

Bruce Bassi: That’s really interesting. I appreciate that strategy. I’ll be thinking about that for the rest of the day and asking a lot of people about that.

Robert Bilder: people often wonder, oh, should you

germinate on ideas, incubate ideas over time? or just do it. a pretty clear answer in creativity research. If you want to be generating creative products, just generate products, get ’em out. there are a number of reasons why that’s probably, and it’s not just a probabilistic thing, like people doing more by chance are gonna be producing more creative stuff. It turns out that the more you put stuff out there in the world, the more creative it tends to be. probably is in part because it frees your mind once you put something out in the world to then entertain new ways of doing it. I was once giving a talk about creativity and there was a, great art professor there, and she says, oh, this is so, such a relief because now it explains why my students hated me when they were taking my class. But then three years later, they love me. said, well, do you mean? She says, well, I used to make them do 20 versions of every assignment. So they hated doing that, but it was really only by the 10th, 11th, and 12th versions that they were really breaking new ground and getting out all the stuff. That was the first things that came to mind. And another thing is that when something is in our mind, it’s occupying energy, space is perfect. like the art project that I have not completed. It’s perfect. I actually made a sculpture. That’s like Michelangelo’s David. it’s absolutely perfect, but I haven’t done it right. So in my mind, it’s perfect. Once I start tripping away at Marble, it’s gonna be a mess, maybe if I did it a hundred or a thousand or 10,000 times, then maybe I would begin to get better at it. But once we externalize things, then we can use our powers of perception to see their strengths, see their weaknesses, and unburden our mind to think about other possibilities, other ways to do things. So just getting it out there is probably a good idea. Picasso has said to have made 50,000 artworks. that’s

a lot of art.

Bruce Bassi: Well, I, I do find it interesting to bring it back to the, technology piece and don’t know if other people could relate to this, but when I see a viral video on social media and I click that profile, they probably have like, sometimes like 300 other videos that didn’t take off, but that one

That one gem, it took off and there was something about it that timing was just right. And imagine if they just like gave up after the 240th one. You know, we never would’ve gotten that one gem or other individuals and musicians and artists who, who make it big like in their forties or fifties they’ve been working on something for 20 years.

mean, it, just, goes to show that you’re saying is totally true. Just need to . Keep generating and producing and, enjoy the process of it, not necessarily what the outcome is just see what happens.

Robert Bilder: Yeah. I like that a lot. Another fun read, Jaron Lanier. one of my favorite books of his is called You Are Not A Gadget. he also wrote a great book, is I think titled something like 10 reasons to, delete all your social media accounts. Now he calls it the race to be the most meta. we look at what goes on on the web nowadays, everyone is, Striving to abstract things to a point where he says it loses its meaning and then people are putting stuff online is just a direct rehashing of their immediate experience by like taking a video or a selfie of something that’s happening now.

I mean, Instagram is sort of like built on, on entirely this model or TikTok not all but much. So what he suggests is. fall for the social media platforms. Make your own website. Put on there what you want. Don’t let yourself be, dictated to in terms of how you present yourself by the formats of Facebook or an Instagram or a TikTok universe. It’s always valuable to, oh, make sure you don’t post anonymously. Always identify yourself so know, that’s really your authentic self. try posting things that take you a hundred times longer to, create than they do to watch. an interesting yardstick we

think about much of what we see on the Internets, is Basically takes as long to watch as it took to make

Finding Limits or Restrictions on New Technologies

Bruce Bassi: Yeah. I do feel sometimes we’re on an episode of Black Mirror where We originally of embraced technology so much for its potential, and then it almost turned in, it did turn into addiction for a lot of folks. And then the technology is, Exclaiming that it’s also the

solution to the problem,

You know, it’s giving you the alert that you used it too much. there’s new tech to put restrictions on how often you’re using it. There’s new tech to monetize or gamify addiction tech it’s just really, extraordinary how we’ve kind of come full circle now to, push it away in or find happy limits to something like that.

Robert Bilder: yeah. What Jarron also says is that world is now dominated by people trying to capture our attention using the most devious ways possible, trying to monetize our attention, get eyeballs on what it is that they want to sell us. you know, he links that also to some of the polarization that we’re seeing today. Politically and in other formats and where people’s attention is drawn to, my language, what he calls the biggest a-holes, know, get the most attention and

the most eyeballs so that it draws people to become more and more aholic, in order to get attention. and so he sees that as part of what’s dividing people keeping people from being able to see each other’s. perspectives. and in contrast there’s the project, by David Brooks that’s called The Weave Project, which basically is trying to overcome the polarization that we see, and get people to actually listen to each other’s perspectives and not be to those extremes. that’s another aspect of we could call creativity, is really being open to experiencing what is the other person’s perspective, what are they right now? How, what’s the way they look at it?

Bruce Bassi: I mean, as

a psychiatrist, that’s why I went into this field, but I know not many people feel the same way.

Robert Bilder: That’s right. it’s not easy to just listen.

It’s

only in the last year that I, acronym, which I’m doing badly at today, by the way. But there’s somebody, I was at a conference with a bunch of people on meditation and wellbeing, somebody said the acronym wait. WAIT. Why am I talking

Center of Biology of Creativity

Bruce Bassi: Well, as a guest on a podcast, you have every right to, talk as much as you feel like. So tell me a little bit about the Center for Biology Creativity. what’s on the, forefront of, innovation there? What what are you guys up to?

Robert Bilder: Yeah,

well we’re continuing to analyze, data. We got a rich data trove from a study that we called the Big C Project, where we studied people who are exceptionally creative artists, visual artists, exceptionally creative scientists, then a group of, uh, what we call smart controls, a smart comparison group. Of people who were matched to the scientists and artists on intellectual ability and education, in order to address the concerns that people would have, oh, well maybe you’re just studying a bunch of smart people compared to regular free range humans. So anyhow, we had these three different groups and then we did a lot of different assessments of their brains, their behavior. did interviews. So we’re continuing to plow through that data. some of the I think really fascinating findings to me. were having to do with the patterns of brain activity, which I think goes along with the concepts we’ve been talking about. one of ’em was, that I really like is when we look at the patterns of brain network connectivity, functional brain network connectivity, you can do certain kinds of fancy analyses using graph theory that. Figure out whether the network is more efficient or more random or somewhere in between. And, you know, efficient networks or like the maps you see when you are on an airplane of the of where the flights go for American, United or Delta. You know, there’s hubs like in Atlanta or LA or Chicago and then spreading out from them.

You’ve got, Smaller airports, then sometimes regional carriers going off from those that’s efficient because, know, most of the time you’re not gonna fill a lot of airplanes flying, let’s say from Burbank to Duluth, you know, like two. So, turns out that creative, the big sea creative brains had more of these random flights. there were, more random patterns of connectivity on a global scale.

So that they were able to fly from Burbank to Duluth, on a direct flight or a private plane. whereas, the less creative folks tended to go via a big hub and then to another big hub, and then out to the, local, airport.

The Relationship Between ADHD and Creativity

Bruce Bassi: is there any data to suggest individuals with A DHD are more creative? Because I feel like they cross pollinate and . Taken new ideas even in a conversation, that I have with them. And it’s just so fascinating to kind of hear it feels like an, unpruned kind of childlike imagination where they’re just in new thoughts here and there

reminds me of what you’re talking about.

Robert Bilder: Yeah, I have not seen, anything on the link between A DHD and creativity per se. However, as you well know, there’s a, what they often call comorbidity, a term that I hate in the Diagnostic and Statistical manual for psychiatric disorders because. We force the disorders to be separate for no good reason. And one of the criteria, if everybody wants to look up the DSM five, I know Dr. Basile already knows the DSM five cold, but for people who don’t, one of the criteria for every mental disorders is not better explained by another mental disorder. So it’s silly, you know, that basically the symptoms of A DHD and bipolar disorder, there’s, there’s quite a bit of overlap in some of the attentional and some of the affective traits that. are shared across those, uh, syndromes. and overall the traits of affective, instability, can be related to those same attentional, disturbances. So, the extent that those things are true, there has been quite a bit of literature linking, disorder to creativity, particularly hypomanic or, you know, the milder forms of, bipolar disorder, bipolar mania, The depressive states less so. Nancy Andreasson, another great author and a good friend, has some interesting work, looking at in the Iowa Writers Project, she believes that, some mood disorder, depressive disorders are linked to, creativity. I think that this is a unique feature of a sampling scheme that she had for her project and in general, it’s not. Not true. There’s also findings people with certain kind of brain lesions may show forms of creativity. again, while there may be, for example, in frontotemporal dementias, there may be spurts of creativity following, development of. Certain kinds of dementia, probably through release of other, functions that had previously been inhibited by intact brain territory. it’s basically not a good idea to get brain damage. stick with the brain. You’ve got be more creative. the best advice I’ve got. try to damage your brain. Don’t try to get a mental illness. Those are not the path to being creative.

The Beneficial Side of ADHD’s Diffuse Attention

Bruce Bassi: Yeah, I mean, we, conceptualize a DHD as a disorder, and by definition, a a bad thing. We wanna fix it and get rid of it. It’s negative, but I, can see a world in which certain traits of the A DHD, of like what you were describing earlier about diffuse attention. Can be beneficial to some people in some way.

our society in a way. we value and reward individuals who are experts in one thing. and so I think that’s why a DHD as always a bad thing. But, you know, you would want somebody who’s an expert in this one focused area rather than . The person who has been hopping around from job to job and career path to career path.

but they are also more creative and interesting and, maybe they’re good at occupations that them to be, attuned to many sensory inputs cross pollinate new ideas from other industries to try to fix a problem. And I feel like with your pursuits and creativity, we could almost reframe characteristics of those individuals with quote unquote A DHD as you know, in certain environments.

Yeah, maybe those A DHD symptoms are not helpful you to take a sit down test, but . your life is not just sit down tests, you know, it’s many things and, it’s not always a bad thing, to be able to diffuse attention.

Robert Bilder: I mean, I think that in all these situations, the key thing is for people to appreciate the way that they, that their mind and their brains work, to, um. Have good spirit of self-acceptance, and, work with what you got. I mean, it’s interesting stimulants you use to treat a DHD One theory is that they increase the frequency of responding in a reduced number of behavioral categories, basically by they narrow attention. the extent that that’s true, you would say, oh, that could be depriving people with a DHD of creativity. At the same time, creativity requires not only being flexible in one’s thinking, in identifying the components of, thought and the potential actions that are gonna be valuable and useful. So one has to be able to stabilize the thoughts long enough to do something good with them. So again, there’s always a balance

I’m gonna write a book that’s called The Other Thing. The reason why is because there’s always, you go to the self-help section of the bookstore or, online, you’ll find a million books on the one thing you need to do to healthier, happier, thinner, whatever. But always another, there’s always balance any of these, processes. I figured, oh, we should really, time you focus on one thing I always got, well, what’s the other thing that is in balance with this and how do I keep myself, centered,

Bruce Bassi: are so

Robert Bilder: soon. The other thing, mark, my words, I’ve been saying I’m gonna write this book for a decade now, but I haven’t gotten around to it.

Bruce Bassi: In your mind. It’s already written perfectly though, perfect

Robert Bilder: so far. It’s perfect.

you asked about the Center for the Biology of Creativity. One of the projects that we’re working on now that’s active is, um, a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab. and that is, supported primarily to develop arts impact measurement tools. so we’ve, started with the idea that The impact of arts on health are mediated by the impact on psychological wellbeing. and so we tried to understand, well, how do we assess psychological wellbeing and how would we know if an arts exposure actually helped that? And, we’ve developed, um, arts impact measurement system and uh, several hundred questionnaires, 4,000 items enable arts organizations to. Have a common framework for assessing the impact of arts on wellbeing. So we think that may be an important way to begin to learn more about arts experiences. And we’re, to launch soon a website, will ask people about their peak experiences with the arts. So if you had your favorite rock concert. that you ever attended, and wanted to write about that, it would give you an opportunity to describe your experience. And we have the methodology, by virtue of a colleague Ariana Anderson, to analyze speech. we’ll get speech samples analyze not only the words that are used, but the. Tone of voice and the way the voice was used to express that and analyze those components in order to understand better how people are feeling at the times of these peak experiences with the arts,

Bruce Bassi: Interesting. And what would be done with that data? Publish it to help support funding for the arts give them feedback about their experience is.

Robert Bilder: those things, and to try to understand better how does the brain actually. Take art and art experiences and convert that into enhanced senses of wellbeing, productivity, personal creativity,

connectedness. All of these features we think are, um, important. Outcomes of engagement with the arts. But so far we know very little about the brain mechanisms that are responsible for those. So if we can understand the brain mechanisms, then hopefully that will first of all be a sales pitch for the arts, showing why they’re helping to convince congressmen who may be reticent to support the arts, for example.

also to help us as we develop new arts and new experiences for people, helps to develop those that are the most impactful and that will enable people to get the most outta them.

The Importance of Being Interested in Arts

Bruce Bassi: what would you say to an individual who doesn’t feel particularly creative or interested in the arts? Why would that be important to them a member of society?

Robert Bilder: Well, I hate to be in a position of Trying to convince somebody. but

I think that, the arts give us a unique window to aspects of ourselves, to our internal workings, to our affective states, our emotional states, our internal visceral states that we often don’t have the time, space, or opportunity to reflect on. so I think that the arts enable us to connect to parts of ourselves. I. That are really important and often neglected.

Bruce Bassi: It’s really well put.

Dr. Builder, it was really fun. Interesting experience talking to you, and I really appreciate the time you took in helping describe the importance of creative work and research done in those fields, for the treatment and, continued progression of, uh, treating mental illness.

Robert Bilder: Pleasure is all mine. Thank you for the good work you’re doing and bringing valuable information to the public.

Bruce Bassi: I thank you so much. Appreciate it,

Robert Bilder: Onwards.

Bruce Bassi: That’s it for this episode. I’d appreciate it if you please like and share this podcast with your colleagues. It’d be especially helpful for us. And if you’d like, please leave us a rating on your favorite pod catcher. If you’re a clinician, I developed a course on how to start a private practice and for patients, I’ve also developed a course on acceptance and commitment therapy and cognitive behavioral based therapy lessons for treating and helping anxiety.

You can find all these on our website as well, as well as the show notes and resources for each episode. Thank you so much, and I’ll see you in the next episode.