Food for Creativity: Tyrosine Promotes Performance in a Convergent-thinking Task

Anecdotal evidence suggests that creative people sometimes use food to overcome mental blocks and lack of inspiration, but empirical support for this possibility is still lacking. In this study we investigated whether performance in tasks assumed to assess convergent and divergent thinking (components of human creativity) is promoted by the food supplement LTyrosine (TYR)—a biochemical precursor of dopamine, which is widely assumed to drive cognitive control and creativity. We found improved performance in the convergent-thinking task while there was no evidence for any impact of TYR in the divergent-thinking task. We argue that convergent thinking might require more cognitive top-down control, which would suggest that TYR can facilitate control-hungry creative operations. Hence, the food we eat may affect the way we think.