CREATIVITY AND MADNESSResearchers funded by the National Science Foundation decided to
try. They used a technique called transcranial direct current stimulation
(tDCS). As the name suggests, specific regions of the brain are stimu-
lated using direct current (DC)—that’s the kind of current you get from
a battery, as opposed to alternating current (AC), which comes from a
wall socket. DC is safer than AC and the amount of electricity used is
small. Some devices are powered by a simple 9-volt battery, the boxy
kind you put in your smoke detectors. tDCS machines can be very sim-
ple. Although commercial ones used for research cost over a thousand
dollars, some brave individuals have cobbled together primitive ones
using $15 worth of parts from their local electronics store. (Consumer
tip: Don’t do it.)
In small studies these devices have been shown to accelerate learn-
ing, enhance concentration, and even treat clinical depression. To
attempt to enhance creativity, electrodes were attached to the foreheads
of thirty-one volunteers, and the part of the brain that lies just behind
the eyes was stimulated. Creativity was measured by testing the partici-
pants’ ability to make analogies.
Analogies represent a very dopaminergic way of thinking about
the world. Here’s an example: light can sometimes act like individual
bullets being fired from a gun, and at other times like ripples traveling
across a pond. An analogy pulls out the abstract, unseen essence of a
concept, and matches it with a similar essence of an apparently unre-
lated concept. The body’s senses perceive two different things, but rea-
son understands how they are the same. Pairing a brand-new idea with
an old familiar one makes the new idea easier to understand.
The ability to draw a connection between two things that had pre-
viously appeared to be unrelated is an important part of creativity, and
it appears that it can be enhanced by electrical stimulation. Compared
to participants who were given fake tDCS, those who got electricity
created more unusual analogies—that is, analogies between things that
seemed very unlike one another. Nevertheless, these highly creative
analogies were just as accurate as the more obvious ones created by the
participants whose devices were secretly turned off.