Creative Minds: Altered Salience as a Bridge Between Creativity and Psychosis, a Case–Control Study
The Journal of Creative Behavior June 17, 2024 Andrea Patti, Giuseppe Pierpaolo Merola, Davide Benedetti et al. 2 citations
Artists report higher levels of aberrant salience—the tendency to attribute unusual significance to stimuli—than both healthy controls and patients with psychosis. In a study of 196 healthy controls, 50 artists from the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, and 84 outpatients diagnosed with psychosis, artists scored significantly higher on the Aberrant Salience Inventory. Group membership was the only factor influencing scores; age, gender, education, and antipsychotic treatment did not. The authors suggest that aberrant salience, rather than being solely a marker of pathology, may enhance creative faculties and unique perceptual experiences, and that education might help channel these mechanisms through art.