Creativity and Dementia
I just read an article that I enjoyed.
I boycotted the New York Times for about 9 months after they published a specific book review (okay, it was for the last Harry Potter book which they acquired early under shady conditions) before the release date, despite the author's and publisher's request to do otherwise. Anyway, I never found a good replacement for the type of stories they publish, and ended up settling for the Dallas Morning News and the local paper online. I had to stop reading cnn.com all together - what trash it wastes time on!
Anyway, now I'm back to the Times. Here's the article that sparked my interest. I may enjoy it more than you since I work in a medical research lab that mainly focuses on aging and the brain, but I think most people would find value in it. The article discusses how some forms of (basically) dementia can result in one part of the brain losing function and another part developing more function. In some cases, the area that becomes more active is one that is related to creativity. For Anne Adams, she went from a mathematics researcher / professor to being unable to add single digit numbers, but with a wonderful ability as an painter. I really like her Invertebrate ABC's book... when I doodle, it tends to be symmetric and balanced, and that is definitely her style in her work for that book. On a side note, I also find it sweet that her husband wrote the words for the book. It seems like even after disease stuck her, they grew and found new ways to be one, working and creating together.
I boycotted the New York Times for about 9 months after they published a specific book review (okay, it was for the last Harry Potter book which they acquired early under shady conditions) before the release date, despite the author's and publisher's request to do otherwise. Anyway, I never found a good replacement for the type of stories they publish, and ended up settling for the Dallas Morning News and the local paper online. I had to stop reading cnn.com all together - what trash it wastes time on!
Anyway, now I'm back to the Times. Here's the article that sparked my interest. I may enjoy it more than you since I work in a medical research lab that mainly focuses on aging and the brain, but I think most people would find value in it. The article discusses how some forms of (basically) dementia can result in one part of the brain losing function and another part developing more function. In some cases, the area that becomes more active is one that is related to creativity. For Anne Adams, she went from a mathematics researcher / professor to being unable to add single digit numbers, but with a wonderful ability as an painter. I really like her Invertebrate ABC's book... when I doodle, it tends to be symmetric and balanced, and that is definitely her style in her work for that book. On a side note, I also find it sweet that her husband wrote the words for the book. It seems like even after disease stuck her, they grew and found new ways to be one, working and creating together.
Labels: Neat or Funny
posted by kathryn at 9:46 PM
3 Comments:
I'd skimmed the article before but hadn't noticed the part about the husband writing the words. That is really cool. Maybe one day when you finally lose it we can move to a big city so we can make our living with street corner performances - you can do the interpretive dance, and I'll lay down the beats and slam poetry to interpret the interpretive dance.
It sounds very interesting. I'll have to check it out when I have time.
Staci
BTW... I had no idea you were such an avid newspaper reader. I'm impressed. Reading the newspaper or reading/listening to the news in any form practically gives me hives. I know, what a current events loser. I just can't bring myself to do it. If I accidentally hear the news (like at the nail place when CNN is on), I get really depressed and can hardly shake it off the rest of the day. You're much tougher than me!
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