The Surprising Link Between Creativity and Schizophrenia

A mural of Salvador Dali and Vincent Van Gogh at the International Fair of Contemporary Art in Madrid in 2006
Philippe Desmazes, AFP/Getty Images

Creative people—or at least those with degrees in creative fields—have a 90 percent higher chance of being diagnosed with schizophrenia than people working in non-creative fields, according to a new study published in The British Journal of Psychiatry. It also found that artistic types are 62 percent more likely to have bipolar disorder, and 39 percent more likely to have depression.

Researchers at King's College London mined a registry of 4.5 million people in Sweden and found links between those who had studied an artistic field (like music or art) and those who had been hospitalized for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression, compared to the general population. Schizophrenia occurs in about 1 percent of the general population.

But that doesn't mean that creativity causes mental illness, as Big Think points out. As scientists like to say, correlation does not equal causation. In the current study, the researchers say the link can be explained by the fact that the brains of creative people may function differently. "Creativity often involves linking ideas or concepts in ways that other people wouldn't think of," James MacCabe, the lead researcher, told New Scientist. "But that's similar to how delusions work—for example, seeing a connection between the color of someone's clothes and being part of an MI5 [UK security service] conspiracy."

This isn't the first study to examine the relationship between creativity and mental illness—and not everyone is convinced that such a relationship exists—but the King's College researchers say the huge scope of their study is different. "High-quality epidemiological evidence has been lacking," they write.

A similar study of the Swedish population from 2011 found a link between bipolar disorder and those working in a creative field, but found no link for schizophrenia or depression. And in 2015, a controversial study by the CEO of a biological research company purportedly found that people working in creative fields were more likely to carry the genetic variants for mental illness. However, those variants only had a tiny effect on creativity—less than 1 percent.

[h/t Big Think]

Pioneering Heart Surgeon René Favaloro Is Being Honored With a Google Doodle

Dr. René Favaloro (left) pictured with colleague Dr. Mason Sones.
The Cleveland Clinic Center for Medical Art & Photography, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY 4.0

Argentinian heart surgeon René Favaloro is the subject of today’s Google Doodle, which features a sketched portrait of the doctor along with an anatomical heart and several medical tools, The Independent reports.

The renowned doctor was born on this day in 1923 in La Plata, the capital of Argentina’s Buenos Aires province, and pursued a degree in medicine at La Plata University. After 12 years as a doctor in La Pampa, where he established the area’s first mobile blood bank, trained nurses, and built his own operating room, Favaloro relocated to the U.S. to specialize in thoracic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.

In 1967, Favaloro performed coronary bypass surgery on a 51-year-old woman whose right coronary artery was blocked, restricting blood flow to her heart. Coronary bypass surgery involves taking a healthy vein from elsewhere in the body (in this case, Favaloro borrowed from the patient’s leg, but you can also use a vein from the arm or chest), and using it to channel the blood from the artery to the heart, bypassing the blockage. According to the Mayo Clinic, it doesn’t cure whatever heart disease that caused the blocked artery, but it can relieve symptoms like chest pain and shortness of breath, and it gives patients time to make other lifestyle changes to further manage their disease.

Favaloro wasn’t keen on being called the “father” of coronary bypass surgery, but his work brought the procedure to the forefront of the clinical field. He moved back to Argentina in 1971 and launched the Favaloro Foundation to train surgeons and treat a variety of patients from diverse economic backgrounds.

Favaloro died by suicide on July 29, 2000, at the age of 77, by a gunshot wound to the chest. His wife had died several years prior, and his foundation had fallen deeply into debt, which Argentinian hospitals and medical centers declined to help pay, The New York Times reported at the time.

“As a surgeon, Dr. Favaloro will be remembered for his ingenuity and imagination,” his colleague Dr. Denton A. Cooley wrote in a tribute shortly after Favaloro’s death. “But as a man ... he will be remembered for his compassion and selflessness.” Today would have been his 96th birthday.

[h/t The Independent]

Forget Lab-Grown Meat—You Can Now Buy Lab-Grown Ice Cream

Deagreez/iStock via Getty Images
Deagreez/iStock via Getty Images

Even though “dairy-free” doesn’t necessarily mean “healthier,” it’s still a necessary disclaimer for dairy-free people who are screaming for ice cream. And between veganism, lactose intolerance, and other dietary dairy restrictions, the race is on to create an ice cream for the masses that doesn’t taste like chalk, chemicals, or sadness.

Bay Area startup Perfect Day may have just pulled ahead of the competition. Today, Fast Company reports, it released three flavors of dairy-free ice cream—Vanilla Salted Fudge, Milky Chocolate, and Vanilla Blackberry Toffee—that contain the same proteins found in cow dairy, but grown in a lab from engineered yeast and DNA. Since those proteins contribute greatly to the rich texture and taste of ice cream that we love so much, Perfect Day’s products are supposedly indistinguishable from the real thing.

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The co-founders, vegan bioengineers Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi, got the idea from their experience in medicine, where fermentation is used to grow things in a lab all the time. “The two of us started scratching our heads and wondering, what if we just apply that same exact technology that’s been around for half a century to make the world’s most in-demand, highest-quality protein?” Pandya explained to Fast Company.

Their lactose-, dairy-, and gluten-free vegan ice cream, which they’ve been working on for five years, includes the dairy proteins casein and whey, as well as plant-based fats and sugar. If you're dairy-free because of a casein or whey allergy or sensitivity, you should treat this ice cream like you would any other foods containing dairy, and heed the "Contains milk protein" disclaimer on Perfect Day products.

Lab-grown dairy has environmental benefits too, considering that cows and other livestock are major culprits of greenhouse gas emissions. Pandya and Gandhi hope to sell their proteins to large-scale food manufacturers, and have teamed up with Archer Daniels Midland, an Illinois-based food processing company, to increase production.

Though it seems like a scoop or two of this ice cream might be the recipe for a perfect day, that wasn’t the inspiration behind the company’s name—the founders stumbled upon a study in which scientists discovered that cows produced more milk when listening to music, and one of the most successful songs was Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” “As a company on a mission to make cows, people, and the planet happier, it seemed like a perfect fit,” the website says.

Can’t wait to taste the magic? You can purchase all three flavors in a three-pint bundle for $60 here.

[h/t Fast Company]