I spent two months studying my own brain…

In 2010 I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type I (a story for a later post)

I focused my senior undergraduate thesis synthesizing research that has spanned decades exploring the connections between creativity and bipolar disorder. I wanted to understand the connection and take it further — what could this evidence do for the brain health community?

Study after study has confirmed the evidence for the link, but I’ll try to keep it brief:

• Individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder as well as their first degree relatives had significantly higher creativity than people in the neurotypical control group.
• In random groups, those with high bipolar disorder risk scores tended to have high creative achievement scores as well.
• Phenomenologically, 82% of patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder affirmed being creative while manic or hypomanic.

It gets even cooler when you take meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of bipolar brains. Across all mood states of bipolar disorder, researchers see a consistent underactivation in a brain region in the frontal lobe that’s associated with response inhibition.

The right inferior frontal gyrus (rIGF), associated with response inhibition, has been found to be consistently underactive in bipolar brains across all mood states

What does this mean for my brain? Lower response inhibition has been correlated with higher creativity scores in research outside of bipolar disorder.

This means that in whatever mood state, my frontal lobe may be giving me a little creative boost, if you will.

But so what? My hope is that this evidence of cognitive difference can bring HOPE to those of us with bipolar disorder, that we don’t need to be manic or hypomanic (often risky, unsustainable places to be) to experience creative advantage. We can, instead, be continuing ongoing treatment and finding challenges and joy in our work, whatever that may be.

Our brains are supporting us as one or many of the following: unique problem solvers, artists, musicians, outside-of-the-box thinkers, writers, adventurers, open-minded empathizers.

Maybe you just got diagnosed, you’re in an inpatient treatment, or you’re stuck on the low end? Hang in there. Many of us at Open Labs have been there too.

It’s 1 a.m. as I’m finishing this piece and I can’t help but think, “Man, my right inferior frontal gyrus is feeling super underactivated right now, but that’s maybe a little bit too nerdy for a blog post.”

I was diagnosed with bipolar I in 2010. I was fortunate to have received ongoing treatment and continued on to complete my Bachelor’s in Psychology at Colorado College. I became a member at Sigmend’s Open Labs this fall of 2017.

If you’re interested to see full research articles to points mentioned above, or want to talk brains, bikes, big mountains, or bipolar disorder, please reach out to me at cassie@sigmend.com.