Creativity and borderline personality disorder: evidence from a voxel-based morphometry study

Abstract

Introduction: Throughout the history, various examples of eminent creative people suffering from mental disorders along with some empirical research reports strengthened the idea of a potential link between creativity and psychopathology.

Methods: This study investigated different facets of psychometrically determined creativity in 20 females diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) relative to 19 healthy female controls. In addition, group differences in grey matter (GM) were examined.

Results: Behavioural findings revealed no significant differences between the BPD group and healthy controls with respect to verbal and figural-graphic creative task performance and creativity-related personality characteristics. Whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analyses revealed a distinct pattern of GM reductions in the BPD group (relative to controls) in a network of brain regions closely associated with various cognitive and emotional functions (including the bilateral orbital inferior frontal gyri and the left superior temporal gyrus), partly overlapping with creativity-related brain regions. Correlation analyses moreover revealed that in the BPD group GM reductions in the orbital parts of the inferior and middle frontal gyri were associated with lower levels of creativity.

Conclusions: This study provides no indications in favour of the putative link between creativity and psychopathology, as sometimes reported in the literature.

Keywords: Borderline personality disorder; creativity; grey matter; neuroimaging.