The Creating Brain: reaching Xanadu

Nancy Andreasen, professor of psychiatry at Iowa University talking with Lynne Malcolm, All In The Mind, Radio National, 21 May 2012.  Dr. Andreasen's most recent book The Creating Brain: the neuroscience of genius is published by Dana Press and distributed in Australia by Footprint Books.

"... creative people tend to be very curious about all kinds of things, they tend to be adventuresome, they tend to be a little bit iconoclastic, which is related to being original of course. Sometimes they just perceive things in a totally new and different way that other people are simply not able to see. I mean they see things that are true and real and that are obvious to them – that's especially true in science and math and they aren't obvious to other people. You know some of the creative scientists I know say over and over, isn't that obvious, isn't that obvious, it's just obvious, doesn't everybody know that, that's obvious.
They are sometimes a little prone to get into trouble because they are original and seem rebellious and especially you could get into trouble when you're a younger person. You may be unpopular with your teachers because you might seem like a know-it-all; you may be unpopular with your peers for the same reason. So some people who are creative have somewhat miserable childhoods. And I think it's one of the challenges of our society, of all societies, to figure out how to actually recognise and nurture these original kids rather than essentially sometimes punishing them for their originality.
Another characteristic is that they tend to be obsessional, not in a diseased way but they start to chew on a problem – and that might be writing a story, it might be a math problem, it might be a computer science problem, it might be creating a painting – and they get into it so deeply that they may end up working all night on what they're doing."

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-creating-brain---reaching-xanadu/4016828

 http://nancyandreasen.com/