Creativity and Delusions: The Dopaminergic Modulation of Cortical Maps

Thinking is one of the most interesting mental processes. Its complexity is sometimes simplified and its different manifestations are classified into normal and abnormal, like the delusional and disorganized thought or the creative one. The boundaries between these facets of thinking are fuzzy causing difficulties in medical, academic, and philosophical discussions. Considering the dopaminergic signal-to-noise neuronal modulation in the central nervous system, and the existence of semantic maps in human brain, a self-organizing neural network model was developed to unify the different thought processes into a single neurocomputational substrate. Simulations were performed varying the dopaminergic modulation and observing the different patterns that emerged at the semantic map. Assuming that the thought process is the total pattern elicited at the output layer of the neural network, the model shows how the normal and abnormal thinking are generated and that there are no borders between their different manifestations. Actually, a continuum of different qualitative reasoning, ranging from delusion to disorganization of thought, and passing through the normal and the creative thinking, seems to be more plausible. The model is far from explaining the complexities of human thinking but, at least, it seems to be a good metaphorical and unifying view of the many facets of this phenomenon usually studied in separated settings.