Alanna

Morton


Annotated Bibliography




What is the Connection Between Schizophrenia and Genius?
Professor Malcolm Campbell
UWRT 1103
March 12th, 2015

Alanna Morton
Griffith, Mary Bess. Alternate Reality Conceptualization: Venturing Along the Fine Line
Between Genius and Madness. Issues in mental health nursing, 2011; 32(10): 624-31.
This academic peer reviewed journal article describes the relationships between the
concepts of genius, madness, and other reality conceptualization experienced by
schizophrenics. It specifically looks into one famous schizophrenic named Jonathan
Nash, who is a famous mathematician. He is infamous for overcoming his struggles, such
as his alterations of reality because of severe hallucinations and delusions as a result of
his schizophrenia. The article depicts the five most prevalent types of schizophrenia (disorganized, catatonic, paranoid, residual, and undifferentiated, paranoid schizophrenia),
which are said to be in about 40% of those with the disease. The author takes all of these
types and compares them to the result of the effected schizophrenics level of creativity
and intelligence as a result of the disease. It is found to be much higher in comparison
with those who do not have the disease. The author presents that the link between genius
and madness dates back more than 2,000 years and continues to the present. In fact, the
emphasis in psychological research began to change from genius to creativity and
giftedness. Albert R.S a famous American psychologist observed that genius also found a
change in emphasis particularly apparent after 1954, when the identification of giftedness
and gifted children became a Cold War essential. The concentration of this vitality was to
provide advanced and specialized educational opportunities for children gifted so that
they could be directed into scientific and technical fields. This source is a credible source
because it has been peer reviewed, was found by means of the reliable UNC Charlotte
Library website, and uses several references from reliable psychologists and the
American Psychiatric Nurses Association. I will use this source to provide information

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and several real life examples, such as John Nashs, on how madness and genius have
become interchangeable.
Ramey, Christopher H. Not in their right mind: the relation of psychopathology
to the quantity and quality of creative thought. Frontiers in psychology, 2014; 5: 835.
This article examines the correlation between schizophrenia and creativity. It describes
the historical and cultural link between psychopathology and creativity. For Plato,
creative individuals are of little use, because his thoughts are said to portray that, for as
much as they are sporadically close to the gods, their practice misrepresents the nature of
reality (e.g., in contrast to practiced philosophy and dialectic, which allows one to
glimpse beyond the world of appearances). The article then begins to go further into the
idea that the creative individual is believed of being possessed or inspired in regards
to the general theory of knowledge and the good (Platos The republic). After looking
into the historical and cultural aspects of the correlation between schizophrenia and
genius the article begins to depict the neural mechanisms that support the relationship. It
provides recent neuroscience research that has highlighted the probable contribution of
both unstructured and organized processes to creative thought (Zabelina D. L., Robinson
M. D. (2010). Creativity as flexible cognitive control. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 4
136143 10.1037/a0017379 [Cross Ref]). The article then ends with an acknowledgment
of the opposing side that although there is evidence of serious methodological limitations,
correlational designs, and problematically unidirectional interpretations. However, it
proposes that the more output of the individual the more likeliness there is to be a higher
quality of creativity. This source is credible because it makes reference to infamous

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philosophers and mathematicians from history all the while using neuroscience and
research to back up the proposition of the correlation between schizophrenia and genius.
In conclusion the authors research has given me a new insight as to why culturally,
historically, and neurologically there is a fine line between schizophrenia and genius.
Goethe University Frankfurt. "Schizophrenia: Impaired activity of the selective
dopamine neurons." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 19 Feb. 2015. Web. 7
Mar. 2015.
This is a magazine article on Medical News Today. The article proves the other side that
there is no correlation between schizophrenia and genius through research done by
professionals. This is posted on a reliable website that has been around and used as a
reliable reference on several medical diseases, sicknesses, along with their treatments and
symptoms since 2003. The article describes the general description of schizophrenia and
explains the neurological contributions to the symptoms as well as the effective and
ineffective treatments for the disease. It refers to the current edition of the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, (PNAS) a German-American team of researchers,
with the cooperation of the Goethe University, which states that a selective dopamine
midbrain population is essential for emotional and intellectual processing that shows the
reduction of electrics in vivo activity in a disease mouse model. Vivo activity is the
effects of various biological entities that are tested on whole, living organisms, animals,
humans, and plants in opposition of a partial or dead organism. In the research Professor
Eleanor Simpson and Professor Jochen Roeper, mathematician Professor Gaby Schneider
of Goethe University, and the physiologist Professor Birgit Liss of the University of Ulm

Alanna Morton
define the neurophysiological impairments within the dopamine system. They proved,
with the use of single cell recordings, that in the brain of mice dopamine midbrain
neurons are responsible for emotional and cognitive processing. These cell recordings
exposed altered patterns and frequencies of electrical activity. They found that the closest
dopamine neurons, which are used for motor control, were not affected. It was then
concluded that the results showed that altered neuronal activity of selective dopamine
neurons is crucial for schizophrenia. So, they found in research that due to neurological
evidence that cognitive deficits, lack of motivation, and lack of emotion were
unresponsive to standard drug therapy. This, in turn makes it very difficult for treated and
socially and emotionally intact schizophrenic patients to have creative and intellectual
mind sets without experiencing several other struggles with severe symptoms of
schizophrenia. The article is very reliable because of the research by several professors of
notable universities. I will use this source to contrast the correlation between
schizophrenia and genius using evidence of neurological science.
Light, G. A., Geyer, M. A., Clementz, B. A., Cadenhead, K. S., Braff, D. L.
Normal P50 Suppression in Schizophrenia Patients Treated With Atypical Antipsychotic
Medications. The American Journal of Psychiatry. Volume 157 Issue 5, May 2000, pp.
767-771
This webpage article thoroughly explains research and even an experiment done to
further describe the effects of atypical antipsychotic medications compared to
conventional antipsychotic medications on schizophrenic patients and to which one was
more affective. I found that this answered my question on whether certain medications
effectively treat schizophrenics more efficiently than another medication. This research

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concluded patient groups did not differ on clinical or demographic measures. The results
support the researchers hypothesis that patients treated with atypical antipsychotic
medications have normal P50 measures of sensory gating. To clarify, P50 suppressions
are used to study cognitive and intellectual dysfunction. It is an operational measure of
sensory gating that can be calculated by averaging electroencephalographic responses to
many pairs of auditory clicks separated by 500 milliseconds. Usually, the second click is
smaller than the response to the first click. The researchers used this information to
determine which patients, based on their P50 suppressions, and should be treated with
either of the two antipsychotic drugs. It was determined that atypical antipsychotic
medications have a greater efficiency in treating cognitive symptoms. This source was
very helpful because it also answered the question of not only if a certain medication is
more efficient in treating schizophrenia than another and if the severity of the
schizophrenia in an individual effects the medication being used to treat it. More
importantly, the results found that the groups receiving atypical and typical antipsychotic
medications minimized the possibility that symptom state accounted for the results at all.
This source was very reliable and credible because it did a research that used evidence of
schizophrenic patients and evidence of science involving their P50 suppressions, which
revealed evidence of their response to medications. I will use this source because I rust
the information cited and the conclusions resulting from their research that was backed
up by science found within their experiment.