Redemption For Neurotic Worriers

Neuroticism is one of the ‘big five’ personality traits recognized by psychologists. The other four are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion and agreeableness.

Psychologists at Kings College London found that creative thinkers tend to be neurotic worriers. It’s thought such individuals have a brain that’s more sensitive to perceive threats than those of other people.

It’s good news — for a change — for those of us whose psyche is often described by a long list of negative emotions, such as anxiety, fear, worry, frustration and loneliness.

‘We’re still a long way off from fully explaining neuroticism, and we’re not offering all of the answers, but we hope that our new theory will help people make sense of their own experiences, and show that although being highly neurotic is by definition unpleasant, it also has creative benefits.” (Dr Adam Perkins, Personality expert, King’s College London.)

Support for the idea that neuroticism is associated with creativity has come from brain scan studies highlighting neural circuits that regulate self-generated thought.

A key emotional center in the brain, a ‘panic button’, located in the amygdala. It is believed to switch on an inappropriate fear response after perceived threats are conjured up in the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex.

‘High scorers on neuroticism have a highly active imagination, which acts as a built-in threat generator,’ Dr Perkins said.

Activity in the medial prefrontal cortex not only produces fear in the neurotic, but is also a powerful creative force, according to the researchers, who explain their theory in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

I found quite comprehensive list of famous neurotics whose talents graced the humankind in the article by Charles Shahar. 

“Many of the great authors, poets, artists, philosophers, entertainers and other prominent figures of the centuries have reflected some neurosis in their work, or in their thinking. From Salvador Dali, to Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Dostoevsky, and Sigmund Freud, the reflections of neurotic people have fascinated and informed us about ourselves. There are countless examples of people who enriched the world simply by expressing their neuroses in creative ways.

“Many famous artists who lived in the past strongly displayed symptoms of depression, with some of the more well known of these cases being Vincent van Gogh and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There are many other artists that that were depressives, including: Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Byron, William Blake, John Keats, TS Elliot, Mark Twain, Noel Coward, George Frederic Handel, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams. In terms of politicians, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill are known to have been depressives.

Among the best-known obsessive-compulsive personalities were Michelangelo, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Howard Hughes and Stanley Kubrick. 

In a word, unhappiness and creativity go hand-in-hand.  Long before the latest scientific findings, the correlation between “genius” and “neurotic” was noted and recorded. Thus, a word of advice for neurotics everywhere: Stop worrying about whatever you are currently obsessing about and, if you aren’t a genius already, start worrying why the hell not. You have a lot going for you — press your panic button and let your amygdala push you out of your comfort zone. Do something new. Something bigger or better. Something truly amazing. Worriers, science tell us, are better warriors.

She Had No Fear

Poster by Joe Scorsone, Alice Drueding

In a nutshell: The autonomic responses associated with fear and hormonal secretions is the function of the amygdala. Scientific studies of the amygdala have led to the discovery of the location of neurons in the amygdala that are responsible for fear conditioning. Fear conditioning is an associative learning process by which we learn through repeated experiences to fear something.

There was an article in Current Biology, a case study of patient called SM — a rare human patient with focal bilateral amygdala lesions. Scientists admit that it was the first investigation of the induction and experience of fear in such a patient.

To provoke fear in SM, she was exposed to a number fear-inducing situations: live snakes and spiders, a tour of a haunted house, emotionally evocative films — you name it, the woman had it all.

Patient SM failed to exhibit fear behaviors, and demonstrated an overall impoverished experience of fear. Her response indicated NO activation of the sympathetic division of the peripheral nervous system: no accelerated heart rate, no dilated pupils, no increase in metabolic rate, and no increase in blood flow to the muscles. All of the above normally triggers a state of fear, and the human amygdala is responsible for it.

The SM woman with damaged amygdala was afraid of nothing and, after 3 months of experiments, reported in multiple questionnaires that shе was, in fact, fearless. Everything else about her emotional makeup was quite ordinary.  SM’s neuropsychological profile has been stable for the past two decades. She performed perfectly within the normal range on standardized tests of IQ, memory, language etc. Conclusion: if there is no triggering mechanism in the brain then there is no state of fear and, consequently, no fear itself.

Interesting that the ancient Incas, as archaeological evidence suggests, might have had the rudimentary knowledge of neurosurgery.  Here is an ancient Peruvian skull with evidence of trepanation (a surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull.)

Inca warriors were famously fearless, and many fallen soldiers had holes drilled in their heads… Could their surgeons (or priests or barbers) have figured out where inside the warriors’ heads hides their fear and gone straight for amygdala with an ancient drill to create a monstrously fearless army?

Another interesting article on the subject of fear and amygdala:  The Amygdala Is Not The Fear Centre, Scientist Now Claim!