Artfully recovering creativity

For many artists who suffer from a stroke or a traumatic injury, the resulting loss of brain functionality often means an end to their creative careers. Yet based on the stories of those like jazz guitarist Pat Martino, who lost all of his musical memory during brain surgery only to re-teach himself to play by listening to his old recordings, it seems the creative brain might be more crafty that we think. New research reveals the complexity of creativity, based on studies of those who've lost their artistic skills and miraculously regained them. What might the implications be for poets and their understanding of their creative process? The Philadelphia Enquirer reports:

"People are creative in different ways," says Chatterjee, himself a serious photographer. "For example, the kind of creativity that operates in the visual arts might be different from the creativity that operates in mathematics. We are at the beginning of understanding the physiology of why certain sensations give us pleasure and the neural underpinnings of aesthetic experiences.

"There are two ways to approach this," he adds. "What is the brain teaching us about creativity and what is creativity teaching us about the brain?"

For those like Martino, the post-stroke creative process is not totally unchanged:

Relaxing in his South Philadelphia apartment, Martino reported a somewhat similar experience when he is soloing. He says that while the stroke has deprived him of some memory, it also helped his music in unforeseen ways: "The greatest gift was the ability to focus on the moment, the moment when you can't see a past and a future," he said. "The less control, the better."