Editorial: Creativity in Pathological Brain Conditions Across the Lifespan

Accumulated evidence showed that, under certain circumstances, creative thinking skills are enhanced in diverse neurodevelopmental disorders and pathological brain conditions. What are the mechanisms underlying the relationship between creativity and atypical brain functioning? On the one hand, it has been proposed that this relation is rooted in executive functions (Cancer et al., 2022). Divergent thinking benefits from an impairment of inhibitory processes, where a depletion of resources is often associated with atypical neural development and acquired brain impairments. Research also shows a crucial role of the dopaminergic system in creative thinking, with conditions characterized by dopamine imbalance supporting creative drive. Also, processing anomalies in diverse cognitive functions (e.g., hierarchical visual perception, working memory updating) and the preference for impulsive over deliberate behaviors (which are associated with several neurodevelopmental disorders), as well as the tendency to connect disparate notions (Cancer et al., 2016), have been hypothesized to enhance creative cognition. However, previous experimental investigations on clinical populations have reported inconsistent findings, due to the wide variety of tests and measures of creative performance, and thus it is not clear why atypical mind/brain functioning can sometimes favor creativity.