Methylphenidate undermines or enhances divergent creativity depending on baseline dopamine synthesis capacity.

ABSTRACT: Catecholamine-enhancing psychostimulants, such as methylphenidate have long been argued to undermine creative thinking. However, prior evidence for this is weak or contradictory, stemming from studies with small sample sizes that do not consider the well-established large variability in psychostimulant effects across different individuals and task demands. We aimed to definitively establish the link between psychostimulants and creative thinking by measuring effects of methylphenidate in 90 healthy participants on distinct creative tasks that measure convergent and divergent thinking, as a function of individuals' baseline dopamine synthesis capacity, indexed with ¹⁸F-FDOPA PET imaging. In a double-blind, within-subject design, participants were administered methylphenidate, pla

SUBMITTER: Sayalı C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10584959 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature