The typical Second Life creator quite likely shares brain chemistry with schizophrenics, although whether this explains the duality of avatar/physical identity I’ll leave for the scientists to sort out.
And while in some ways this might seem like a joke, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the qualities inherent in the act creating in a virtual world, and whether this truly has an impact on brain chemistry.
But maybe I’ve been putting the cart before the horse – it’s not that Second Life and virtual worlds changes your brain chemistry, but rather people with a certain neurochemistry tend to be attracted to creating content and having an avatar.
The Karolinska Institutet reports that creativity is linked to mental health:
New research shows a possible explanation for the link between mental health and creativity. By studying receptors in the brain, researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have managed to show that the dopamine system in healthy, highly creative people is similar in some respects to that seen in people with schizophrenia.
High creative skills have been shown to be somewhat more common in people who have mental illness in the family. Creativity is also linked to a slightly higher risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Certain psychological traits, such as the ability to make unusual or bizarre associations are also shared by schizophrenics and healthy, highly creative people. And now the correlation between creativity and mental health has scientific backing.
The New York Times recently reported on creativity as well, and quoted Rex Jung that creativity is like, well, pornography (which might explain a lot of, um, activity in Second Life as well):
Among the tests for creativity, the article highlights a few presented by Dr. Jung’s team: Imagine people could instantly change their sex, or imagine clouds had strings; what would be the implications?
If that doesn’t sound like Second Life I don’t know what does. As does this:
“The brain appears to be an efficient superhighway that gets you from Point A to Point B” when it comes to intelligence, Dr. Jung explained. “But in the regions of the brain related to creativity, there appears to be lots of little side roads with interesting detours, and meandering little byways.”
Sounds a lot like a typical evening in Second Life – detours and meandering byways.
The classic scientific work on the impact of having an avatar seems to be largely based around the idea that avatar identity and interacting in a virtual world can have an impact on our ‘real’ lives. A thinner avatar can make dieting more effective, or learning how to use the viewer can enhance our cognitive function.
But there might be something to the idea as well that Second Life also tends to select for individuals who are able to detour and meander….which would beg the question: for all the focus on social media or making virtual worlds more ‘user friendly’, there may be a neurological basis for why some people stay and some people leave and perform mouse clicks in Farmville – the people who stay are just crazy enough to feel like they’re home.
I remember feeling an enormous sense of expansion and relief when I first started “creating” in Second Life. I’m a writer and illustrator in my first life, two professions that I gravitated towards because I hoped to be able to use my creative skills. Instead, I found that there were as many hoops to jump through and conditions to be met before I would be allowed to create as there are in any profession. The more I worked to meet those requirements the more restricted and un-creative I felt. I call it conditional creativity and it’s almost guaranteed to put out the flame of real creativity – at least in my case. I wonder if part of the freedom I felt in SL was simply that I was working entirely for me and had no expectations about making money or being rewarded in any way. What emerged were possibilities – a wonderland of “detours” and “meandering byways.” Who was it (Brenda Ueland?)who said, “The imagination needs moodling – moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.” Second Life is perfect for that sort of blissful expansion of consciousness. I’m waiting for some scientist to measure my dopamine levels while I’m working on a Story Quest
Jenaia
I’m not surprised by this one bit. The more I’ve learned about people in SL, the more I’ve realized that many of them struggle with at least low-grade mental illness or emotional disorders. It may also be that people are more open about it with online friends. I know that I’m slow to share with friends in real life that I struggle with bi-polar disorder, but I’ve felt secure enough to let friends in SL know.
And guess what? I’m the creative director at an interactive media company in my first life. I love my job and I wouldn’t change who I am.
Interesting, but… Schizophrenia != “dual” or “split” personalities. That’s a very old myth that has been carried forth from the early days of that particular labeling. In reality, schizophrenia dx involve both positive (i.e., delusions, hallucinations, etc) and negative (i.e., paucity of speech, flat affect, etc) symptoms.
In other words, the symptomology has zero to do with a “split” or “dual” personality, though, it can involve being “split off from reality” in as much as the sufferer may experience something more akin to seeing a “different world” than that which those who are not afflicted with that particular disorder might perceive.
But yes, the research has long shown a significant correlation between “creativity” and “mental illness.” Where “mental illness” is not only defined but sometimes, even constructed, by the very society in which we live. And it is about as fluid as fiction… and faddish, too… a la the dx du jour.
For example, in the 1980s, it was eating disorders, in 90s, ADHD, and presently, autism seems to be all the rage. We, as a society, love labeling people who do not fit our world view.
That being said, I leave you with a quote from the book, “Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illness” by Ian Hacking:
“The most important contribution here is the metaphor of an ecological niche within which mental illnesses thrive. Such niches require a number of vectors. I emphasize four. One, inevitably, is medical. The illness should fit into a larger framework of diagnosis: a taxonomy of illness. The most interesting vector is cultural polarity: the illness should be situated between two elements of contemporary culture, one romantic and virtuous, the other vicious and tending to crime. What counts as crime or as virtue is itself a characteristic of the larger society, and the virtues are not fixed for all time: prudence, a virtue for the Protestant bourgeoisie of early modern Europe, had been a mere weakness in the feudal era. Then we need a vector of observability; that the disorder should be visible as a disorder, as suffering, as something to escape. Finally something more familiar: the illness, despite the pain it produces, should also provide some release that is not available elsewhere in the culture in which it thrives.
The lectures are rich in historical anecdote and curious details. But they are not mere stories. They lay out, by an example, the power of the concept of an ecological niche for a transient mental illness. I take for granted that mental illness — something that counts as madness within a society — requires both victims and experts. We call these patients and clinicians”
Creativity is also strongly linked to biological stress. Neurologically, it’s about parallel activation cascades.
Well, part of this you have got very wrong, Dusan.
There are, by definition, conscious and unconscious parts of our psyche. The unconscious part, again by definition, is beyond the control of consciousness. This unconscious is the part that creative people can ‘access’… and it’s the part that ‘overwhelms’ people with mental illness.
“the people who stay are just crazy enough to feel like they’re home” …WRONG… these are the people who do not dare to mix reality and fiction for fear they might lose themselves….these are the people who play Farmville, not SL.
To be able to ‘play’ roles within your RL or SL, you have to be fairly comfortable with who you are (i.e. relatively stable).Those who are slightly disturbed would much rather hang on to Real Life with both hands.
@ soror nishi…
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“To be able to ‘play’ roles within your RL or SL, you have to be fairly comfortable with who you are (i.e. relatively stable).Those who are slightly disturbed would much rather hang on to Real Life with both hands.”
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This statement rings so true to me.
In the late 1960s I experimented often with psychedelic chemicals, while I wasn’t addicted to the chemicals, I did become addicted to the experience… leading me to my quest for enlightenment without using chemicals.
Almost without exception, those people that felt “loss of control” issues were those that seemed to exhibit that lack of stability, that lack of comfortability with who they felt they were.
How many people in Second Life are actually experimenting with different identities and how many are being their same old selves with a different name and appearance? I agree that there is a great amount of creativity in SL, but the kinds of mental illness linked with creativity—schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder—are also linked with deficits in empathy. People with those illnesses lack the ability to see things from another person’s perspective. They aren’t going to be very successful at role playing different personalities.
In recent study I conducted on everyday Residents’ learning practices in SL, I formally observed what I had seen just hanging out in SL: it’s all about being creative and the ways and reasons creative people tend to learn. I have a background in the arts, and that influenced the lens I used. The meandering and moodling, Jenaia commented about, I saw too.
Here’s the study abstract.
http://tinyurl.com/yjojsu3
hah, Karolinska Instituted PR strikes again (well since practically I live on one of their campuses..). Second Life is probably the only place where both autistic- and schizophrenic-like brains can meet, collaborate and avoid calling meltdowns in each other. We still recognise who is in the other camp. And all is well.
Dusan,
Your title piqued my interest. When I create, do art, in RL or SL, I get in a zone, where flow happens. I know dopamine levels are way up there. It is a high. The disconnect from control, that is schizophrenia, is not at all a part of it.
@ soror nishi
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This unconscious is the part that creative people can ‘access’… and it’s the part that ‘overwhelms’ people with mental illness
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This reminds me of a conversation, perhaps anecdotal, reported to have occurred between James Joyce and Carl Jung, where Joyce is trying to convince himself that his daughter is not schizophrenic:
Joyce: “After all, I do the same sorts of things with language myself.”
Jung: “You are diving, but she is sinking.”
As Anton Wilson comments on this, “all of us who write anything that goes below the surface of naturalism can understand Joyce’s scepticism. We never know for sure whether we’re diving or just sinking.”
Interesting blog and follow-on comments.
I don’t accept that creativity is chiefly characterized by the ability to make “unusual or bizarre associations” which is why I don’t accept that the “surrealism” which passes for art in Second Life is necessarily creative.
I can’t dispute the neurological findings concerning similarities in the dopamine systems of “creative” people and “schizophrenics” but I would challenge the researchers to produce a more substantial definition of creativity, one that doesn’t simply assume the popular belief that being weird means you’re artistic.
Then again, maybe I should RTFA
A different approach to creativity. I have a different approach to linking concentration with mental well being. You can read my thoughts at the article, use your concentration.
http://www.bukisa.com/articles/281775_use-your-concentration
Here’s another neuro-chemical angle for you:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/jfahk
This study finds evidence that when the brain discovers a new concept, it gets a little shot of opium.
there was a time when the combination of “madness” and creativity were nurtured (so long as the madness wasn’t “dangerous”) … Van Gogh? Picasso? I think now-a-days if anyone with their creative potential were to crop up in modern society, all their “ills” and creativity would be medicated/hospitalized into oblivion. Perhaps SL, with it’s anonymity will allow the creative-crazy to be able to funnel that spark into something where they don’t have to worry about the padded wagon coming to get them.