Tuesday, 19 April 2016

Research: MAPS - Can Psychedelic Drugs Enhance Creativity?

http://www.maps.org/news/multimedia-library/3171-can-psychedelic-drugs-enhance-creativity

Can Psychedelic Drugs Enhance Creativity?

Maps article - coulomb may be useful to refer to when writing introduction or summary section or for summarizing the research and evidence highlited in the article (link: http://patch.com/california/santacruz/can-psychedelic-drugs-enhance-creativity).  

academic/scientific research evidence 

  • "Research studies by Willis Harmon, James Fadiman, Oscar Janiger, and others have confirmed that something substantial underlies these claims."
  • "James Fadiman’s recently-published book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide"
  • Investigating the interaction between schizotypy, divergent thinking and cannabis use - Valerie Curran and Celia Morgan (LINK; http://www.sciencedirect.com.lcproxy.shu.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S1053810011002856)

    "Abstract

    Cannabis acutely increases schizotypy and chronic use is associated with elevated rates of psychosis. Creative individuals have higher levels of schizotypy, however links between cannabis use, schizotypy and creativity have not been investigated. We investigated the effects of cannabis smoked naturalistically on schizotypy and divergent thinking, a measure of creativity. One hundred and sixty cannabis users were tested on 1 day when sober and another day when intoxicated with cannabis. State and trait measures of both schizotypy and creativity were administered. Quartile splits compared those lowest (n = 47) and highest (n = 43) in trait creativity. Cannabis increased verbal fluency in low creatives to the same level as that of high creatives. Cannabis increased state psychosis-like symptoms in both groups and the high creativity group were significantly higher in trait schizotypy, but this does not appear to be linked to the verbal fluency change. Acute cannabis use increases divergent thinking as indexed by verbal fluency in low creatives." NOTE In psychology, schizotypy is a theory stating that there is a continuum of personality characteristics and experiences ranging from normal dissociative, imaginative states to more extreme states related to psychosis and in particular, schizophrenia. 




anecdotal evidence 

  •  Kyosho Izumi’s LSD-inspired design of the ideal psychiatric hospital - http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-kiyoshi-izumi-built-the-psych-ward-of-the-future-by-dropping-acid
  • There hasn’t been a formal creativity study with the classical psychedelics since 1965

Other articles and links 

Maps - Can psychedelic drugs enhance creativity? 
-www.maps.org 
 July 26, 2012 



- Any key speakers? Bio? Comments on them and their "practice" / "relevant research"? 
 http://twitter.com/#!/DavidJayBrown 

- Any links between these key speakers to my cop 2 project work?

- Any ideas / key things to take forward from article and what I've found / felt after reading it?

Maps - Can psychedelic drugs enhance creativity? 

  1. summary on cultural and creative impacts of psychedelics 
  2. Cannabis and creativity 
  3. anectodal and academic/scientific evidence discussed