Creative Sonic Boom?

I recently read an article in the LA Times about people who have creative surges after suffering brain damage. We've all heard of art therapy. I wonder if it has something to do with that. Sometimes when you lose one thing, such as speech, you gain another, like creativity.  Maybe it was something dormant that was only awakened by an extreme of brain damage....who knows?

The brain is such a complicated piece of work that scientists are still trying to figure it out. I remember after I had my stroke, I couldn't stop writing and writing...you know, once I was able to type properly again :). How fascinating to know that if I hadn't had the stroke, I may not have been able to complete a screenplay or finish my full length play.

"There are virtually no situations where brain damage makes things better," says Anjan Chatterjee, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who is working on a book about art and the brain. But art is, he adds, one of the few complex aspects of human cognition that doesn't necessarily get worse.

-LA Times by Emily Sohn 5.20.11

The brain...