Parkinson’s and Creativity: A Surprising Side Effect
We all search for silver linings to offset our losses, whatever they may be. With PD, I have found quite a few: friendships with people I most likely wouldn’t have gotten to know; an appreciation for tenacity in the face of disease; more acceptance of others with afflictions; and to my surprise, enhanced creativity. PD can lead us to more openness and experimentation, two qualities that are required for living a creative and engaged life. This may be due to changes in the brain brought on by the disease itself, changes brought on by the medications used to treat it, the influence of the experience of living with the disease, or a combination of all three.
Some researchers suggest that dopamine supplementation used to treat movement disorders may also act on other parts of the brain such as impulse control and pleasure response, which in turn can enhance the creative process. The Israeli neurologist Rivka Inzelberg suggests that drugs taken to restore motor control in one part of the brain may end up producing excesses of dopamine in another. And it may be that such high dopamine levels are responsible for the bizarre emergence of dedicated artistic activity that blossoms post-diagnosis in some Parkinson’s patients. (Rivka Inzelberg, Brain & Neuroscience BMJ 2018;360:k1146)
It has also been suggested that Parkinson’s disease itself may destroy certain dopamine receptor neurons in the thalamus, the brain’s information switchboard, which allows more information to flow in an unfiltered way. At a certain level, such unfiltered flow results in mental illness – the kind of heightened mental activity characteristic of schizophrenics in which highly fanciful connections between disparate subjects are made. The longstanding perception of a link between madness, creativity and genius may be associated with unnatural levels of dopamine in the brain. In the words of Orjan de Manzano, one of the authors of a 2010 study about the brain and dopamine receptors, “Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by a less intact box.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaWz3BlACWo - reference at 9:03 into the speech)
But while researchers are on the trail of the biochemical source of creativity in Parkinson’s, there are other factors that may also be significant, though less quantifiable: creativity in PD patients may also be driven by the circumstances and sense of self that the disease creates. The fact that we wear our disease forces us into an open, unadorned presentation of ourselves. This is who I am, take it or leave it. That kind of forthrightness can contribute a level of confidence in our approach to life that has some influence on how we interact with the world around us. We are not afraid to be outside of the norm because we have no choice. We discover a new boldness, even a rawness in our honesty with how we approach life and others.
Another contributor to the artistic process is the satisfaction we can gain in being fully engaged in an activity we enjoy and the escape from our disease that a single-minded pursuit offers us. Sometimes when this happens to me, I actually forget that I have PD. I am in another world, gladly leaving my Parkinson’s behind. Complete involvement can sometimes function as a kind of meditation, an antidote to disease. It puts our limitations in the background and what we can do in the foreground. We are up front, with the steering wheel; disease is in the back.
I was a choreographer and dancer before I developed Parkinson’s. After my diagnosis, I stopped making art and thought that I would never be involved with dance again. But though I had a long hiatus from making dances, I have now returned to the creative process. And to my surprise, my experience of it is different and in many ways more fulfilling than it was before.
In part, I attribute the difference to the presence of a pressured health clock. I work with less hesitation and am more fully committed to the process because I don’t know how my body will progress, so now is the time for everything. But I also attribute the difference to PD itself. Parkinson’s may make it more difficult for me to move, but, ironically, easier for me to choreograph.
My artistic inclination in pre-PD time was to find the right choice, whether that was the right movement, the right music or the right idea. There was a singular aspect to my thinking, and my readiness to criticize and edit my thoughts was ever present, making my process often strained and difficult. With PD now, I am more open to all possibilities, and I am less hard on myself. I know there are many solutions to artistic challenges and I am willing to entertain them all. This is a liberating difference, one that makes the process enjoyable and less fraught with concern about the outcome.
The sense of greater freedom in the process is spiritual nourishment. PD takes so much from us. The act of creating counters this. It is an addition instead of a subtraction. And greater use of our imaginations gives us back ourselves. We discover who we are again.
In this sense, creativity may be both a startling byproduct of Parkinson’s and a newly recognized element of its therapy. And although it has been documented more frequently in relation to visual arts, enhanced creativity may materialize in any form: a beautiful dinner, a poem, a solution to a plumbing problem. Whatever its source, and whatever way in which it expresses itself, new powers of creativity are, within the massive disadvantages of PD, a surprising, uplifting, paradoxical benefit.
Note: A different version of this piece was first published in 2013 in On the Move, where Jon Stamford was editor in chief.
Pamela Quinn is the originator and creative director of PD Movement Lab for which she teaches movement principles and strategies to PwPs. In addition to her role as a teacher/coach, she is known for her Parkinson’s-related choreography, sharing the Grand Prize for the WPC 2010 video competition and presenting her work at the opening ceremony at the WPC 2019 in Kyoto. Ms. Quinn will exhibit her choreography again at the same ceremony in Barcelona as well as serve as a panelist. View the Scientific Program here. You can learn more about her from her website, pdmovementlab.com.
Ideas and opinions expressed in this post reflect that of the author(s) solely. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of the World Parkinson Coalition®