The change in brain activity that occurs when a biopolar patient’s mood improves is the same change that occurs in individuals undergoing bouts of creativity.

So how does psychosis translate into creativity?

Elyn Saks, a mental health law professor at the University of Southern California, explained that because people with psychosis don’t filter stimuli as well as other people, “they’re able to entertain contradictory ideas simultaneously, and become aware of loose associations that most people’s unconscious brains wouldn’t consider worthy of sending to the surface of our consciousness.”