Ep 36 - HEALTH HACK: The Science of Creativity

In this episode of Health Hacktivators, Dr. Alka Patel speaks about the multifaceted nature of creativity and its significance in your life.

She defines creativity as the ability to generate original ideas, solve problems, and think beyond conventional norms. Dr. Patel explains the science of creativity and explores neurotransmitters like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, which play a crucial role in motivating, bonding, and enhancing creative thinking.

She emphasises that creativity is an essential human trait that can be nurtured through exposure to diverse stimuli and a supportive environment. Studies reveal the positive impact of creative activities on stress levels and overall well-being, emphasising the need to recognize creativity's therapeutic benefits. Dr. Patel encourages everyone to banish the misconception that creativity is limited to a select few and urges listeners to embrace and unleash their creative potential.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• The different aspects of the multifaceted cognitive process known as creativity

• How neurotransmitters like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins impact creative thinking

• Factors that contribute to the development of creativity in childhood and adulthood

• The correlation between engaging in creative activities and improved well-being and physical health

• How to use data and devices to measure creativity, such as the Associations Test

For more information about this episode head to https://dralkapatel.com/podcast-health-hacktivators/

To read the blogs that accompany the show and for even more focused health hacks, head to https://dralkapatel.com/blog/

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Find out what most other Doctors don’t tell you, with cutting-edge health-hacktivating advice from Lifestyle Medicine Doctor, GP and Longevity Expert Dr Alka Patel.

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Podcast Transcript

PLEASE NOTE these transcripts are auto-generated and may not be wholly accurate.

Dr Alka Patel (00:02.326)

Hi, hey and hello health activators. Today, I am exploring the topic of creativity. So what I'll be doing is I'll be looking at what creativity is, and that's from a brain and biochemistry perspective, and also looking at how creative expression benefits your health. So thinking about creativity then, when we think of creativity, well, most people usually think of the arts. So...

things like painting and music and dancing and writing. So why is this? Well, the reason for this is because this concept of creativity, it has very traditionally been linked to artistic expression. It's been linked to the ability to produce works really that evoke emotion and beauty and imagination. But I want you to think about this because creativity, well, it extends well beyond the realms of art.

It's very much more what I describe as a multifaceted cognitive process. So it applies to so many domains of being human. So yes, it is about art and producing art in its various forms, but it also includes more problem solving like activities, scientific discoveries, technological innovations, entrepreneurship. And if you think about it, everyday activities as well. So think about a researcher.

designing a study or an engineer who might be designing a new bit of technology. Even a chef creating an innovative recipe, a writer who's trying to develop a captivating marketing campaign or an entrepreneur who's got this novel business strategy. All of these endeavors, well, they do involve creativity. And on a more day-to-day basis, opening up your fridge and then conjuring up a meal from leftovers.

Well, that's creativity too. So with all of this in mind then, what is a good working definition of creativity? Well, I like to think of it as your ability to generate original ideas, solutions, concepts. So think of it as thinking outside the box, connecting what seem to be unrelated concepts and then coming up with novel approaches that somehow seem to go beyond conventional thinking.

Dr Alka Patel (02:25.422)

Creativity, I believe, it's all about integrating all of your very diverse knowledge, your experience and your perspectives to simply produce something new. And as I've said, it's a very dynamic cognitive process and it of course then manifests in so many forms from, yes, artistic expression to scientific discoveries to technological innovations as well.

And creativity, I think, is very much an essential skill. It's this sort of fundamental human trait that we have, which we need as well to enable us to adapt to change and what we use to drive personal progress and drive personal growth as well. So that's what I believe creativity is. What about the science here? Well, the science of creativity, it is a pretty captivating field, I must say.

What neuroscientists have found is that creativity involves lots and lots of brain regions and they're all working together. So giving you a few examples, there's the prefrontal cortex and that's responsible for problem solving and decision making. And that then interacts with your hippocampus, which is where you form memories. And you've also got another part of your brain called the anterior cingulate cortex.

and that monitors your ideas, it filters your ideas. And all the while, there's this network called a default mode network, this web of neurons in your brain that are really crucial for, well, for your spontaneous thoughts and for incubating your ideas. It's as though you've got this idea incubator inside your brain. That's how there really is this incredible network of brain regions at play.

And on top of that, add another layer of this whole host of biochemistry, which comes into play with creativity. So you will have heard me talk on this show a lot about your daily dose. When I talk about your daily dose, I'm talking about transmitters, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. So looking at this from a more creative angle, dopamine, well, dopamine is your reward neurotransmitter, and that's something you associate with motivation.

Dr Alka Patel (04:43.834)

and pleasure and exploration. And what studies have suggested is that higher levels of dopamine, well, they're linked to much greater creative thinking because there's this sort of willingness to take risks in order to generate that reward you get when you generate novel ideas. And then you've got oxytocin, which is your love hormone. It's your bonding hormone. And what that does is it increases emotional.

understanding and it increases empathy and then that inspires creative thinking, creative works that evoke emotions. Plus the other thing oxytocin does is it promotes this sort of more, well more vivid mental imagery. So you've got more mental vivid imagery when you've got more oxytocin floating around and that then of course then taps into your ability to generate more creative ideas as well.

So we've got dopamine, we've got oxytocin, and then you've got serotonin. So serotonin affects your mood, it affects your emotional regulation, and there is some research as well, which suggests that serotonin levels enhance creativity by creating a much more positive emotional state and by reducing anxiety. Because, well, really, you don't think clearly. You don't think with clarity or with creativity when you're anxious, do you? So...

when your serotonin levels are elevated, then you're able to think much more freely and much more imaginatively as well. And then the final part of your dose neurotransmitters are your endorphins. So these are your mood enhancers. And when you engage in creative activities, then you trigger this release of endorphins, which gives you this sense of pleasure. And then it's this pleasure which then motivates you even further.

to continue to explore your creativity. So you've got this beautiful loop that's going on. So that's your dose chemicals, but there's even more. There's also noradrenaline, and noradrenaline is what's involved in your body's stress response and also involved in attention regulation. So what this means is that what noradrenaline does is that it, well, it facilitates more focused attention. So focused attention during.

Dr Alka Patel (07:03.022)

creative process which means that you're generating and refining your ideas with much more concentration as well. So yes, you get creative ideas when you're not consciously thinking about them, you get shower thoughts of course, but then you also need noradrenaline to focus in on those ideas. And there's also another chemical called GABA, aminobutyric acid, GABA, which is an inhibitory

So what that means is that it reduces anxiety, it promotes relaxation and lower levels of GABA, well, they've been associated with higher levels of creativity because your sort of mental processes are much more free. They're much less constrained when you've got lower levels of GABA floating around. And what else? Oh yeah, something called glutamate.

Now glutamate is a, well, it's an excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain. So what it does is it transmits signals between neurons and what it's involved in is learning and memory. And of course, learning and memory is essential for a creativity because you're forming an association between new ideas, which then increases.

your creative genius as well. So you can see that as well as different parts of your brain at work, there's a lot of biochemistry here at play too. So that's a little bit about the kind of brain and biochemical science behind creativity. Now you might be wondering then, well, if that's the case, why do some people just seem much more creative than others? Have you ever wondered that? Why do some people seem able to just come up with these great ideas or produce?

beautiful pieces of music or pieces of art, whilst others just don't. Is creativity something that you just have or don't have? Well, it turns out that it's more the result of this very complex interplay of both, of both nature and nurture. So let me give you a few reasons then why some people might seem more creative than others. Well, firstly, you do have neurological genetic factors.

Dr Alka Patel (09:13.582)

So some people may have naturally higher levels of dopamine, for example, or they may have naturally more enhanced neural connections in some of those brain regions that I've mentioned that are associated with creativity. And we think there might be more specific genetic factors that do contribute to your creative abilities, but we haven't quite been able to unravel these yet. So there are some genetic factors at play. Then what comes into play is your

early experiences in your childhood. So if you've had very early exposure to lots of diverse stimuli, to creative activities, to being in a supportive environment, then these opportunities then allow you to explore different forms of creative expression during your formative years, during your childhood years, and then if that occurs then you're much more likely to demonstrate that level of creativity in adulthood as well.

So there's genetics, there's your early chartered experiences and then there's your later experiences because remember of course we draw from our experiences. So any exposure to diverse cultures, to art forms, to literature, to scientific disciplines, they're all enriching your creative thinking as well. And all of that, well it comes down to also having this openness, this openness to new experiences. So if you are someone who's much more open to

trying out new things to exploring unfamiliar territories, then you're much more likely to engage in creative thinking as well. And that then goes hand in hand with risk taking and tolerance for ambiguity. You see, creativity does often involve taking risks or venturing into the unknown. So the more comfortable you are with that, the more comfortable you are with ambiguity and uncertainty,

then of course the more inclined you are to experiment, to experiment creatively. What else comes into play? Well, of course mindset and perspective. So this idea of having a growth mindset where you believe that your abilities can be developed through effort and through learning. Well, if you've got that sort of mindset, then that is going to foster creativity. People who embrace challenges and you failures as opportunities for growth, you're much more likely to then

Dr Alka Patel (11:36.43)

push your boundaries much more creatively as well. And with this as well comes motivation, comes this sense of intrinsic interest. So your intrinsic motivation, it's your desire to engage in creative activities simply for the joy of the activity, for the joy of the process, rather than any external rewards. If you've got that intrinsic interest, that internal motivation,

then that will fuel your creative thinking as well. So you can see with just those few examples how creativity really is a very multifaceted trait. So yes, while some people may appear more naturally creative, I do believe that everyone has the potential to enhance their creative thinking and to do this through practice and to do it through exposure to new experiences, to do it through a willingness to simply explore the unknown as well.

So then how, how can you do it? How do you express your creativity? Well, there's countless ways, aren't there? There are absolutely no bounds to creativity. So let me put out here a few suggestions. So think about visual arts, right? Painting, drawing, sketching, sculpting, photography, graphic design. Or what about writing? So whether that's poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journaling.

Writing does allow you to explore your imagination, to explore your emotions, to explore your ideas, all through words, of course. Music, musical instruments, composing melodies, writing lyrics, singing, singing in the shower. They're all very powerful forms of creative expression in the realm of music as well. And along with music may come dance and movement. And dance is a, well, it's a beautiful way to convey your emotions. It's a lovely way to tell your stories and express your creativity.

through your body movements and your gestures as well. Maybe you've thought about crafts, so things like knitting or crochet or woodwork or pottery. And what about whenever you step into the kitchen? Presenting dishes, preparing dishes, doing that in more innovative ways. It can be really delightful to create food into an art form as well. Oh, and there's so much more. What about exploring the digital multimedia world?

Dr Alka Patel (14:00.558)

creative software and animations and digital storytelling, or things like, I don't know, getting into the garden, landscaping, arranging plants in a lovely way, getting a bunch of flowers and thinking how creative you can be about popping them into a pot. Journaling, as I've mentioned, creative writing as well, making collages, DIY even, revamping old items that you got at home. And of course, as I've mentioned already,

scientific innovations, really thinking about the boundaries of technological innovation as well. So there's lots and lots I could go on and on about different ways to express your creativity. But really the key thing to remember is that, well, creativity is very much a personal expression. It's a personal journey. And the best form, the best form of creative expression has to be the one that brings you

a degree of joy and fulfillment and pleasure, and more importantly, fun, right? Feel the fun and feel free to just explore multiple senses, multiple avenues, experiment with different forms until you find what resonates with your own creative spirit as well. So we now know then what creativity is, the different ways that we can express creativity and what's going on in your brain and with your biochemistry through

creativity as well. So what has all this got to do with health? What's it got to do with health? How does creativity sort of benefit your health? Well here it's probably worth looking at a couple of research studies. So I've come across a number. There's one study that was conducted by Drexel University and this was in 2017 and what this did was explore the impact of art on art making on stress levels.

So what the researchers did in this study was they recruited, it was 39 adults and they divided them into two groups. One group did 45 minutes of art making, so things like painting or clay modelling. And the other group, what they did was they observed art. So they didn't have that direct experiential, practical involvement in art. And what the study found was that those who actively engaged in art making, they had significantly lower

Dr Alka Patel (16:21.23)

cortisol level. So cortisol is your stress hormones. So your stress hormones reduce if you're actively engaged in creative expression in art making. Another study, this was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology in 2016. And this was looking at the link between creative activities and well, subjective well being this sense of well being. So this involved a survey of 658 university students.

and they were engaged in various creative pursuits, things like writing and painting and playing music. And what the study revealed, which is really not surprising, is there's very positive correlation between engaging in creative activities and having a higher level of wellbeing, a higher level of positive emotions. And what about physical health as well? So the study published in the American Journal of Public Health, this was in 2015,

This looked at the association between creativity and physical health. So this particular study looked at data from over 6,000 adults and found that if you regularly engaged in creative cultural activities, then you had lower rates of high blood pressure. So there's a direct benefit to your health as well. So it is really very clear that creative expression positively impacts both your emotional health

and your physical health, but somehow it seems to often get overlooked for its therapeutic benefit. And I do wonder why this is, and one reason may well be that this perception of creativity, there's a perception of creativity as being something more recreational, it's a recreational pursuit rather than a therapeutic health tool. And there's another reason as well, I guess, which is really very much about the fast pace at which we live.

in at the moment, it really pushes us away from engaging in creative activities. It feels as though you know we don't have time to pursue the more creative art forms within us but it's really important isn't it to recognise that creative expression itself is a very important way to process your emotions, reduce your stress, enhance your well-being. It's a powerful tool for self-expression and for healing as well. So

Dr Alka Patel (18:43.046)

Let's now have a look at data and devices because that of course is something that I do like to do on this show. So what data can you look at as a measure of creativity?

So here's a couple of interesting tests that you can do. So the first test I wanted to share with you is something called the RAT test, R-A-T. This is the Remote Associations Test. So I'll put a link in the show notes for you to try this test out. It's super fun and very, very interesting. So this is a test that was developed by Sarnoff Mednik. This was in the 1960s. And what this test does is it measures your degree of creative convergent

thinking, creative conversion thinking. So what is that? So through the test, what you do is you have this a series of questions and a group of words and what you need to do through the test is to provide a single extra word that links all the other words together. So it's a type of word association test. So for example, if I say the words opera, hand and dish, what comes to your mind that connects all three words?

What are you thinking about? Because you need creative thought to find the right answer to this. What are you thinking? Well, in this case, the right answer is soap. Soap opera, hand soap, soap dish. So you see how this works, right? What about the words home, sea and bed? What's the connecting word here? This is the...

Convergent thinking, what convergent thinking do you need to converge together to find that one word that connects these three other words? You got it yet? Oh yes, it is sick. Homesick, seasick, sick bed. There you go. So this is convergent creative thinking. So have a look at the test. As I said, I've put it in the, in the show notes for you to have a look at and gives you an idea of your creative flair for this type of

Dr Alka Patel (20:46.626)

Convergent Thinking, which is the opposite to another test, which is a test of Divergent Creative Thinking. So this other test is called the Alternative Uses Test. And what this test is your ability to come up with, well, with a wide range of solutions to a single problem. And this is a test that was designed in 1967 by someone called J.P. Guilford. So in this test, and you can do it now, take an object, any object,

Give yourself a time constraint to say two minutes and try and come up with as many alternative uses for this object as is possible in two minutes, right? So put two minutes on the clock, pause this episode if you need to, and think about and write down what alternative uses you can come up with for a brick, right?

And once you've done that, you grade your results. So according to this test, you grade your results across four categories. Category one is fluency. And this is the number of alternative uses that you can think of. Category two is originality. How unusual are these alternatives? So this is your evidence of thinking differently, thinking creatively. Third category is flexibility. So this is about the range of ideas that you've had in different categories. And category number four is elaboration. How much detail?

is there in the development of these ideas. So I'll put the test links into the show notes for you. Have some fun with them, try them out, see what you can come up with in terms of measuring your level of creative thinking. And what about devices? Are there any specific devices, any technologies that can help your boosting your creative expression? Well, the answer is of course, yes. We're living in this realm of AI, aren't we? So there are so many AI powered creative tools now.

ChatGPT of course, which has taken off written creativity. There's Mid Journey, another amazing AI based tool that's really got the power to turn your ideas into artwork, creating absolutely stunning visuals in, well, in less than a minute, all based on a simple text description. It is truly amazing. There are spectacular art pieces that come from this. And there's so many others in terms of the sort of AI realm, Scribe and Jasper and...

Dr Alka Patel (23:09.958)

Autodesk and WordTune and Notion and Veed and Speechify, I could give you more and more and more. And this again is a list, this kind of AI generative texting and images and music and videos and all sorts of creative content. This is a list that will continue to grow and grow and grow. So yes, there's data that you can capture about your creativity. There's devices and tools and software that you can use.

as well to zone in on your creative expression as well. So the final question of course is, what decision are you making today? So have you then ever found yourself thinking, I'm not creative, I'm just not the creative type? Well, today's the day to banish that thought because as I hope you found out from listening to this episode, creativity is within everyone.

Of course it is, and it's simply up to you to unleash it. And I hope today I've given you many, many ways and many reasons as well to do just that. So I will draw this episode to a close. I will see you next week, and I wish you a creative health-activating day.