Darold Treffert, M.D., one of the foremost experts on savantism, cites examples of “acquired savants” – defined as “previously non-disabled persons who after some injury or disease begin to demonstrate some, until then, dormant savant characteristics and capacities.”

A new Atlantic magazine article gives examples such as British photographer Eadweard Muybridge who created images like this one, “The Human Figure in Motion.”

A famous 1880s series of his photographs of a horse in midstride proved there was a point when all four feet were off the ground.

Definitions of the word “improvise” include “to compose, play, recite, or sing on the spur of the moment, without previous preparation” and “to make, provide, or arrange from whatever materials are readily available.”

One of the elements of creativity tests such as the widely used Torrance Test of Creative Thinking is questions about “unusual uses” – such as, “How many uses can you think of for a tin can?”

That sounds like a cognitive sort of improvisation.

You can see drawings by children and adults who took the Torrance Test, plus evaluations by creativity scholars James C. Kaufman and Kyung Hee Kim, in the post How Creative Are You?

The photo is Keith Jarrett. His Amazon.com page lists his albums and notes he “has come to be recognized as one of the most creative musicians of our times – universally acclaimed as an improviser of unsurpassed genius.”

“To assume, then, that such diseases usually promote artistic talent wrongly reinforces simplistic notions of the ‘mad genius.’” Kay Redfield Jamison

In an interview for the NPR radio program Fresh Air with Terry Gross, science writer Jonah Lehrer commented, “One of the surprising things that’s emerged from the study of moods…is that putting [people] in a bad mood — making them a little bit sad or melancholy — comes with some cognitive benefits.

“So sadness, although it is not fun and is not pleasant, it does sharpen the mind a little bit.

“And one of the long-standing mysteries in the field of creativity is this correlation — and this was first identified by Kay Redfield Jamison and others — is people suffering from various kinds of depression and creative output.”

He continued, “People who are successful creators — especially writers — are anywhere between 8 and 40 times more likely to suffer from bipolar depression than the general public. And no one’s known what to make of this.”

Exploring the intricate “landscapes” of neuroanatomy has inspired a number of scientists to create visual art.

Heather Bimonte-Nelson, head of the Memory and Aging Laboratory at Arizona State University, creates paintings that add a new dimension to her research.

She notes, “Science is really about convincing people that your hypothesis or theory could be the truth in nature.

“And if you’re not a good storyteller, people will never believe it. You could have the best theory ever, but if you can’t communicate it effectively so others understand it, it doesn’t count.”

As described in an article about her work, this painting of hers, titled “GABA,” functions as “a portrait of her daughters’ seizures, and the quest to control them.

“Even tones of light green and cerulean blue streak down the canvas, but are disrupted on one side in a dramatic blood-red band.

“The colors represent neurotransmitters in the brain. The blues and greens are the inhibitory gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA, and the red is glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter.”

“When I don’t build in cushions of time between activities for reflection and creative synthesis, my writing suffers, my mood suffers, everything suffers.”

Those are comments by writer Lisa Rivero, who continues, “Without this imaginative life, we might still be productive, but at what cost?

“I know that when I give in to the temptation to pack every spare hour or moment with tasks…I may still write as much, just not as well.”

From my post Developing Creativity by Staring Out the Window – quoting from her post If you don’t value your imaginative life, no one else will.

[One of her books: "A Parent's Guide to Gifted Teens: Living with Intense and Creative Adolescents."]

Packing “every spare hour or moment with tasks” as Rivero puts it, is something I more or less constantly feel pressured to do. But, as she points out, at what cost? Stress and overwork and other challenges are among the consequences for me, and probably many writers.

What is the potential value of not always doing?

A new post by Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D. describes research indicating that creative people tend to daydream more, even while concentrating on tasks.

This image is from a series of Mercedes Benz ads. The text reads:

Left brain: I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Right brain: I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.

[Image and text from post: Left Brain/Right Brain: Gorgeously Illustrated Mercedes Benz Ads.]

Having two “brains” with different functions is valid neuroscience. But how true is the idea of the right hemisphere being the “creative” one?

As popular and appealing as that concept is, it can also be a misleading oversimplification. A number of writers and neuroscientists encourage an integration of thinking, using both sides of our brain/mind.

“What would be truly surprising would be to find that sound could not suggest colour, that colours could not evoke the idea of a melody, and that sound and colour were unsuitable for the translation of ideas, seeing that things have always found their expression through a system of reciprocal analogy.” Charles Baudelaire

A simple definition of synesthesia is that it is a “crosstalking” or overlapping of sensory experiences that for most people remain separate.

Researchers find a higher proportion of creative people are synesthetes.

The image is from the book “The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science.”

The publisher explains that synesthesia occurs “when two or more senses cooperate in perception. Once dismissed as imagination or delusion, metaphor or drug-induced hallucination, the experience of synesthesia has now been documented by scans of synesthetes’ brains…”