CREATIVITY AND MADNESSWe inhibit our ability to notice things that are unimportant so we
don’t have to waste our attention on them. If we’re distracted by how
clean the windows are as we walk down the street, we may miss the
Don’t Walk sign at the intersection. If we attach equal significance to
the color of a person’s tie and the expression on his face, we may fail
to observe something very important to our future well-being. If you
live next to a fire station, even the sounds of sirens will be inhibited
after your dopamine circuits realize that nothing ever happens when
they start to wail. Someone visiting your home might say, “What’s that
sound?” And you answer, “What sound?”
Sometimes our environment is so enriched with new things that
latent inhibition is unable to pick and choose what is most impor-
tant. This experience can be exhilarating or frightening depending on
the situation and the person who is experiencing it. If you’re in an
exotic foreign country, there’s not much to inhibit, and it can cause
great pleasure but also confusion and disorientation—culture shock.
Author and journalist Adam Hochschild described it this way: “When
I’m in a country radically different from my own, I notice much more.
It is as if I’ve taken a mind-altering drug that allows me to see things I
would normally miss. I feel much more alive.” As the new environment
becomes familiar, we adjust, and eventually master it. We separate out
the things that will affect us from those that won’t, and latent inhibition
returns, making us comfortable and confident in our new surroundings.
We can once again separate the essential from the nonessential.
But what if the brain is unable to make this adjustment? What if
the most familiar place feels like an alien environment? This problem is
not confined to schizophrenia. A group of people living with this con-
dition created a website called the Low Latent Inhibition Resource and
Discovery Centre. They describe the feeling this way:
With low latent inhibition, an individual can treat familiar
stimuli almost in the same manner as they would new stimuli.
Think of the details you notice when you see something new
for the first time and how it grabs your attention. From that all
kinds of questions may arise in your mind. “What is that, what