Are creative and crazy the same thing?

Back in January, I wrote about some theories related to the scientific causes of  creativity. One of them was about a possible relation or similarity between schizophrenia and creativity - a study done three years ago found that the behavior of some highly creative people is rather like that of people with the mental illness.

Now comes a study that finds a certain gene mutation may result in intense creativity in some people and in schizophrenia or psychosis in others. The scientific community will probably want to see this mutation examined further before subscribing to this one study’s results, but the connection is intriguing. I just hope people don’t use it to reinforce the widely held notion that artists are nuts.

  Read the story and see what you think.

Cat images painted by artist Louis Wain during the period when he became schizophrenic.