Sylvia Plath, who also died by suicide at the young age of 31, suffered from severe mood disorder for much of her life. Although she was probably depressed at the time of

her death, this period was preceded by a time when she worked late into the night and got up early in the morning, writing poetry intensely – and often poetry with a wry, dry sense of humor, suggesting intermittent periods of a manic or hypomanic state. Martin Luther Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical suffered periods of intense despair, but also periods of extremely high energy. After his Ninety-five Theses unexpectedly launched the Reformation, he devoted enormous energy to writing theological tracts to defend his position. There are many other well-known creative people who suffered from mood disorders, many of them bipolar: Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, and Theodore Roosevelt, to mention only a few. Anecdotal accounts of the lives of creative people are fascinating, because they convey Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical a human and personal element. They also suggest, that examining the association between creativity and mood disorders is an interesting scientific pursuit. However, the real test of whether there is an association can only Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical be determined by rigorous

empirical studies. Such studies are relatively rare, however, because research on the nature of creativity presents a variety of challenges. Challenges in studying creativity One of the greatest challenges faced by creativity researchers is defining the nature of the sample to be studied. The use of the term “creativity” to refer to individuals who make creative contributions is relatively modern. Up until the early 20th century, such individuals were said to have “genius.” For example, the landmark study of Lewis Terman, who prospectively followed Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical a group of highly gifted children over many decades, was called “Genetic Studies of Genius.”1 In this particular study “genius” was defined as having a high intelligence quotient (IQ) on the TQ tests that Terman had developed. Interestingly, as Terman and his group followed these high-IQ individuals into adulthood,

they Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical observed that they were generally more successful than average, but that very few actually made first significant, creative contributions, thereby documenting that having a high IQ is a different mental trait, than being creative. Other early studies by Lombroso, Ellis, and Galton also used the term “genius.”2-4 In these works genius was seen as roughly equivalent to being eminent, in a variety of fields. Ellis, for example, chose to study people whose lives were described in the British Dictionary of National http://www.selleckchem.com/products/Axitinib.html Biography and who had entries longer than three pages. This of course provided him with a very mixed group of people, ranging from politicians to industrialists to artists and scientists, not all of whom would be considered to be creative in current usage.