It’s the dopamine that gets you high late in the night: Dopamine, wakefulness, creativity and madness, all in one!
Science Daily has a very interesting research
One Sleepless Night Increases Dopamine In The Human Brain
The study reports
Just one night without sleep can increase the amount of the chemical dopamine in the human brain, according to new imaging research in the August 20 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Because drugs that increase dopamine, like amphetamines, promote wakefulness, the findings offer a potential mechanism explaining how the brain helps people stay awake despite the urge to sleep.
Don’t worry buddy, dopamine’s there to help you!
The study reports something more, and that’s what I found the most interesting
However, the study also shows that the increase in dopamine cannot compensate for the cognitive deficits caused by sleep deprivation.
The reason I find it interesting is this. I am a musician. Many times, before I go to sleep I play around with my musician’s toys (synthesizers, guitars, etc.). I usually sleep around at 1 a.m. If I start playing music earlier, as 1 a.m. approaches, I am feeling even more tired. After 1 a.m. passes, I am slowly feeling more awake. Not only that, but I am also getting more creative! I really can’t explain it, but it’s like as if ideas are constantly popping out of my head.
So I made a little search.
I first stumbled on wikipedia where it has this entry
Dopamine – Latent inhibition and creative drive
There it says
Dopamine in the mesolimbic pathway increases general arousal and goal directed behaviors and decreases latent inhibition; all three effects increase the creative drive of idea generation. This has led to a three-factor model of creativity involving the frontal lobes, the temporal lobes, and mesolimbic dopamine (Flaherty, A.W, (2005). "Frontotemporal and dopaminergic control of idea generation and creative drive". Journal of Comparative Neurology 493 (1): 147–153. doi:. PMID 16254989)
Yeah baby! That’s me!!! 
Unfortunately, I couldn’t access the paper. AND THAT BECAUSE IT WANTS ME TO PAY $30 TO ACCESS. THAT’S WHY I !@#!@)@##(!@#!@#)!^%( HATE THE PIMPS OF KNOWLEDGE (Pimps of Knowledge! Free resources for all! How universities exploit knowledge while the PirateBay helps you)
But I digress
(CORRECTION: You can access this paper from harvard here http://mbb.harvard.edu/content/undergrad/JCNAnatCreativityFlaherty.pdf)
So, after that I stumbled upon this post
Low Latent Inhibition Plus High Intelligence Leads To High Creativity?
That paper connected (like the entry in wikipedia) latent inhibition, creativity and psychosis. Now, latent inhibition is a procedure via which we filter out all useless information. That is, for example, the ticking of a clock when we’re reading a book. This research here Decreased Latent Inhibition Is Associated With Increased Creative Achievement in High-Functioning Individuals offers evidence that a low latent inhibition correlates with both genius and madness. That happens, because low latent inhibition means more information at any given time. People that are intelligent enough and have a high working memory capacity, can cope well this information, thus being more creative, since they can make more connections between things than the average person. On the other hand, people that don’t have a very high intelligence could sink into mental illness, due to the overflow of information.
Encefalus ready to fight for free knowledge
This paper, also, links dopamine with latent inhibition
Latent inhibition (LI) is a preconscious gating mechanism that allows animals with complex nervous systems to ignore stimuli previously experienced as irrelevant. Decreased LI has been associated with dopaminergic agonist intoxication and schizophrenic conditions
However, those of you who are proficient in cognitive sciences will know of the link between drugs and dopamine. Cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines, all are related with dopamine. This paper makes the following observation
Rats treated with dopaminergic agonists such as amphetamine, which heighten
attention, show decrements in latent inhibition (Weiner, Lubow, & Feldon, 1988), while humans
and animals treated with dopaminergic antagonists—frequently used as antipsychotics—show
enhanced LI (Shadach, Feldon, & Weiner, 1999; Weiner & Feldon, 1987).
And it also explains the link between all these and madness
In keeping with the psychopharmacological findings, reductions in LI have generally been associated with sychopathological predispositions in humans theoretically characterized by abnormalities of dopaminergic neurotransmission—most particularly with schizophrenia and its associated features and conditions (Baruch, Hemsley, & Gray, 1988a, 1988b; Lubow & Gewirtz, 1995; Serra, Jones, Toone, & Gray, 2001).
Creativity, drugs and madness
This paper also identifies a link between creativeness and openess and extraversion in the Big Five, but I don’t want to go any further concerning the matter of personality traits, because I am not very convinced of their usefulness (I’m planning to explain why in future articles).
However, concerning personality disorders, as they are described in the DSM, I found this in Science Daily concerning the work of Vanderbilt psychologists Brad Folley and Sohee Park was published online last week by the journal Schizophrenia Research.
Odd Behavior And Creativity May Go Hand-in-hand
This reports that schizotypal personalities are very creative because they get the benefits of schizophrenia (the ability to make new and loose connections between events and objects), but withouth the drawbacks. They also found that their right hemisphere was far more active during creative behavior, than the right hemisphere of normal people and schizophrenics. This means that they probably can access both hemispheres faster, and, thus, they can make connections more easily , than the average person.
New research on individuals with schizotypal personalities – people characterized by odd behavior and language but who are not psychotic or schizophrenic – offers the first neurological evidence that they are more creative than either normal or fully schizophrenic individuals, and rely more heavily on the right sides of their brains than the general population to access their creativity.
Psychologists believe that a number of famous creative luminaries, including Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Emily Dickinson and Isaac Newton, had schizotypal personalities.
Possible nutcase
Then the article goes on
Folley and Park conducted two experiments to compare the creative thinking processes of schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal control subjects. In the first experiment, the researchers showed research subjects a variety of household objects and asked them to make up new functions for them. The results showed that the schizotypes were better able to creatively suggest new uses for the objects, while the schizophrenics and average subjects performed similarly to one another.
"The idea that schizotypes have enhanced creativity has been out there for a long time but no one has investigated the behavioral manifestations and their neural correlates experimentally," Folley says. "Our paper is unique because we investigated the creative process experimentally and we also looked at the blood flow in the brain while research subjects were undergoing creative tasks."
Folley and Park conducted two experiments to compare the creative thinking processes of schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal control subjects. In the first experiment, the researchers showed research subjects a variety of household objects and asked them to make up new functions for them. The results showed that the schizotypes were better able to creatively suggest new uses for the objects, while the schizophrenics and average subjects performed similarly to one another.
In the second experiment, the three groups again were asked to identify new uses for everyday objects as well as to perform a basic control task while the activity in their prefrontal lobes was monitored using a brain scanning techniques called near-infrared optical spectroscopy. The brain scans showed that all groups used both brain hemispheres for creative tasks, but that the activation of the right hemispheres of the schizotypes was dramatically greater than that of the schizophrenic and average subjects, suggesting a positive benefit of schizotypy.
Maybe this guy is more creative than you think
The explanation is this
"Thought processes for individuals with schizophrenia are often very disorganized, almost to the point where they can’t really be creative because they cannot get all of their thoughts coherent enough to do that," Folley observes. "Schizotypes, on the other hand, are free from the severe, debilitating symptoms surrounding schizophrenia and also have an enhanced creative ability."
And concerning the right hemisphere…
"In the scientific community, the popular idea that creativity exists in the right side of the brain is thought to be ridiculous, because you need both hemispheres of your brain to make novel associations and to perform other creative tasks," Folley says. "We found that all three groups, schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal controls, did use both hemispheres when performing creative tasks. But the brain scans of the schizotypes showed a hugely increased activation of the right hemisphere compared to the schizophrenics and the normal controls."
In support of this theory, Folley points to research by Swiss neuroscientist Peter Brugger who found that everyday associations, such as recognizing the car key on your keychain, and verbal abilities are controlled by the left hemisphere while novel associations, such as finding a new use for a object or navigating a new place, are controlled by the right hemisphere.
Brugger hypothesized that schizotypes should make novel associations faster because they are better at accessing both hemispheres – a prediction that was verified in a subsequent study. His theory can also explain research which shows that a disproportional number of schizotypes and schizophrenics are neither right nor left hand dominant, but instead use both hands for a variety of tasks, suggesting that they recruit both sides of their brains for a variety of tasks more so than the average person.
So there you have it! Lots of information on dopamine, latent inhibition, creativity and madness. I think that this ought to keep you occupied and thinking for some time 
Further Reading:
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
i was expecting a conclusion.
you can study creativity all you want, it will do you no good.
trying to plan creativity is a waste of time. creative thoughts and ideas come when you least expect them.
sometimes i have thoughts that are so radical that i forget them instantly. it used to frustrate me immensly. i would sit and try to recall my train of thought but it is useless once the thought is suppressed. i have never considered myself mad but i was held in a psych ward for 2 weeks. o well.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
also, while drugs and alcohol may give you a slight boost at first, over time they destroy your capacity to think (esp. if abused.)
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I agree with you in both your comments. Studying creativity CAN be a waste of time, when instead of just letting your talents grow, you are trying to force them to grow. However, the study of creativity is a part of cognitive psychology that and it is very promising, since no-one has yet discovered a deffinite answer on the subject.
I also agree with drugs and alcohol. You need to regulate their usage, otherwise they’re effects can be detrimental.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:59 am
[...] Encefalus, a report to complement my pondering of sleep deprived mad scientists, in which the Author ponders the wonders of Dopamine, an important agent in wakefulness, creativity, and madness, all at the same [...]
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:19 am
I disagree with the other two commenters. Great holy grail of a post!
I am somewhat ambidextrous but more of a lefty, and I definitely think I can make connections to things creatively if not too loosely. I’ve turned out somewhat shy because, as a kid, I always used to get misunderstood when I would throw out weird thought-trains that no one else could follow without being in my head. Definitely learned to censor that well though, in my teen years.
I’m really interested in the part that the drug cannabis plays in all this. I know it has an effect on the dopamine system in addition to the less-understood cannabinoid system, but I don’t know enough about the specifics of dopamine. Write an article about that! lol.
March 16th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
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February 10th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
I get it. The longer I stay awake the stranger the conversations I have with people, but it only works between certain points. After two and up to about six in the morning is probably the strangest time cause after that I typically crash.
March 28th, 2011 at 9:57 am
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November 7th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Please explain your statement:
“On the other hand, people that don’t have a very high intelligence could sink into mental illness, due to the overflow of information.”
How would that explain people like John Nash. His intelligence was obviously not affected, yet he suffered schizophrenia.