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Epilepsy gives woman compulsion to write poems - health - 19 September 2014 - New Scientist@import "/css/gridmain.css"; @import "/css/article.css";@import "/css/comlist.css";@import "/data/images/ns/haas/haas.css";/* specific to this article view */#maincol {border-top:solid #A7A7A7 1px; padding-top:15px;}/* Basic commenting CSS*/.combx {margin:10px 0 0 0;padding:10px 20px 10px 10px;}#compnl {border-top:solid #A7A7A7 1px;}/* comment styles for article page only *//* form styles */#comform {margin:20px 50px 20px 10px;}#comform label{width: 90px;text-align: right;}#comform div.userhelp {margin:0 0 2px 115px;}#comform input.textinput, #comform textarea {width:300px;}#comform div.floatclear, #comformlogin div.floatclear {margin-bottom:10px;}#comform input#comcancel{margin:0 10px 0 0;}#comform input#compreview{margin:0 10px 0 0;}#comform textarea {height:95px;}#comformlogin {margin:20px 100px 20px 100px;}#comformlogin label{width: 120px;}#comformlogin input.textinput {width:150px;}#snv_health a {background: url('/img/bg/snv_health.jpg') no-repeat; color:#fff;}/* article social media */#sharebtns {width:440px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:20px; padding:15px 10px 15px 10px; background:#F2F2F2;}#sharebtns div.floatleft {margin-right:10px;}#sharebtns .stumble {margin-top:1px;}.grpTools img {margin-right:8px; margin-top:9px;}#fblike {margin-top:41px;}
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Epilepsy gives woman compulsion to write poems15:30 19 September 2014 byHelen ThomsonFor similar stories, visit theBooks and Art, Mental Healthand The Human BrainTopic GuidesShall I compare thee to... well, no one actually. A 76-year-old woman has developed an incredibly rare disorder – she has the compulsive urge to write poetry. Her brain is now being studied by scientists who want to understand more about the neurological basis for creativity. In 2013, the woman arrived at a UK hospital complaining of memory problems and a tendency to lose her way in familiar locations. For the previous two years, she had experienced occasional seizures. She was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy and treated with the drug lamotrigine, which stopped her seizures. However, as they receded, a strange behaviour took hold. She began to compulsively write poetry – something she hadn't shown any interest in previously. Suddenly, the woman was writing 10 to 15 poems a day, becoming annoyed if she was disrupted. Her work rhymed but the content was banal if a touch wistful – a style her husband described as doggerel (see "Unstoppable creativity"). About six months after her seizures stopped, the desire to write became less strong, although it still persists to some extent. Brain reorganisation Doctors call the intense desire to write hypergraphia. It typically occurs alongside schizophrenia and an individual's output is usually rambling and disorganised. "It was highly unusual to see such highly structured and creative hypergraphia without any of the other behavioural disturbances," says the woman's neurologist, Jason Warren at University College London. So what was going on? Warren's team speculates that chronic seizures may lead to a reorganisation of circuitry in the brain, which in this case linked language systems with those that generate emotional responses and a sense of reward, explaining her compulsiveness. These circuits are relatively close to each other in the temporal lobes of the brain. "Perhaps these reorganised circuits were dormant while the seizures were occurring," says Warren. "When they went away, those circuits came back online and the new behaviour emerged." Previous reports have described various behavioural changes emerging in people as their seizures recede, and Warren's group has worked with another person who developed a craving for music. However, the phenomena remain poorly understood. "Ultimately, unravelling the brain mechanisms involved may require functional imaging techniques such as fMRI," he says. There's also the possibility that the neural effects triggered by taking lamotrigine may have interacted with the neural changes caused by the woman's seizures, predisposing specific circuits to reorganise themselves in her brain. Quirky creativity Warren emphasises caution when trying to extrapolate from single case studies, but says individual cases do sometimes offer some valuable insight into human behaviour. For example, when we think about writing poetry we usually assume it's been created via conscious thought and effort. In this case, it seems that the woman spontaneously created rhyming verse. Brain scans showed that she had unusual activity in her left temporal lobe, which is known to be key to language production and verbal thought. "So speculatively, this might suggest that there are brain circuits that create a highly structured behaviour, which have been switched on somehow, like a computer program that has been launched to produce verse," says Warren. "It's very striking." Adam Zeman, a professor of cognitive and behavioural neurology at the University of Exeter, UK, says the woman's poetry has a slightly "hypomanic" feel. This type of behaviour is often associated with bipolar disorder and can lead to an uncontrollable – and undesirable – euphoric response. "Aspects of the complex process of creativity involved here are motivational – something happened to kick-start her creative urge – and linguistic – something made word-play a means of satisfying that urge," he says. Perhaps the underlying message is that creativity is quirky, he says, involving spontaneous brain activity that can be stimulated or released in unexpected ways. Journal reference: Neurocase, DOI: 10.1080/13554794.2014.953178 Unstoppable creativityHere is a typical example of the woman's work:
To tidy out cupboards is morally wrong
I sing you this song, I tell you I'm right.
Each time that I've done it, thrown all out of sight,
I've regretted it.
Think of the treasures now lost to the world
Measureless gold, riches unfurled,
Diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds – you must have had them,
All tucked well away.
So
To tidy out cupboards, throw rubbish from sight
(Even the poems you write up at night)
Is morally wrong.
So I'm keeping this one.
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