lornamatic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesso

http://www.jtresser.com/GESSO.html

LATimes story on some ongoing studies about neurology and creativity: Getting Scientific About Arts Education.

Perfect pitch never helped me much in high school algebra, but it would be nice to see some results proving that studying the arts facilitates learning in other areas. And I am looking forward to the day when the positive psychology folks are able to do some in-depth work linking gratification and satisfaction to participation in extra-curricular activities.

The magic chemical: NAA, or N-acetyl-aspartate. High levels of NAA can increase creativity in people of high intelligence, but diminish creativity in those with less intelligence.

Highly anxious rats were found to have low levels of a brain chemical that increases with exposure to challenges and mental stimulation. It also seems to play a factor in whether or not new neural cell growth is successful.

Here’s the Reuters story. Exposure to new things increased the amount of the beneficial chemical, which reduced anxiety. And we all know reducing anxiety is a good thing to do.

A potential example of people being drawn to creative fields as survival technique?

There’s a much longer thing waiting to be written on this, just not tonight.

Exhibit A
Most popular lyrics in Great Britain in 2008

Exhibit B
An oldie but goodie, psych paper from Austin:
(full .pdf, launches Acrobat)

“… depressed participants…. used the word, “I” more than did never-depressed participants…”