The dividing line between artistic creativity and mental illness can be a thin one, as history has shown, and now, researchers are suggesting they may have genetic roots in common.
Small, common genetic mutations that might be giving people a creative boost could also be linked with mental conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, a study has found.
Researchers used a DNA code database well known in the field of genetic studies — the deCODE library compiled from samples of the population of Iceland.
Genetic and medical data from more than 80,000 Icelanders was scanned to identify a DNA signature linked to a doubled risk for schizophrenia and a one-third increase for bipolar disorder, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Then, the researchers looked for that same DNA signature in Icelanders engaged in artistic endeavors, analyzing more than 1,000 volunteers from the country's national societies of music, theater, visual arts, dance and writing.
Members of those societies were 17 percent more likely to display that same genetic signature than were non-members, the study found.
The finding was in line with previous similar studies in Sweden and the Netherlands that also compared DNA signatures of people in artistic occupations with those of the general public and showed a tendency toward similar genetic changes for the creative individuals.
Why genetic mutations that raise risks of mental illness would persist in humans is possibly tied to benefits they may also provide, says neurologist Kári Stefánson, who heads the biological research company deCODE Genetics.
"They are found in most of us, and they're common because they either confer or in the past conferred some reproductive advantage," he says.
The evolutionary advantage of possessing a more creative mind could help explain why such mutations persist, he suggests, even given their possible links to debilitating mental disorders such as schizophrenia.
"The results of this study should not have come as a surprise because to be creative, you have to think differently from the crowd, and we had previously shown that carriers of genetic factors that predispose to schizophrenia do so," Stefánson says.
Some other experts suggested caution about assuming such a direct genetic link between creativity and conditions like schizophrenia.
"Any particular set of genes is only going to explain a very small part of variation in any psychological trait," says Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
There are many other factors that may be involved with whether or not a person is going to experience creativity or descend into schizophrenia, he points out, "things like what you have going on in your life, your environment, etc."
The apparent genetic effect proposed in Stefánsson's study, while meeting the narrow definition of statistically significant, is minute since the genes in question have less than a one percent effect on creativity, other researchers point out.
Any statistical association is a long way from showing cause and effect, they caution.
