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^BC-HEALTH-TALENTS
^Brain damage may spark creative talent -U.S. study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A rare form of dementia which causes the loss of many brain functions can also heighten the artistic talents of those afflicted, a study said Thursday.
Damage to one part of the brain may somehow release functions that were previously suppressed, said neurologist Dr. Bruce Miller, from the University of California at Los Angeles, who conducted the study.
Miller described the case of a stockbroker who left his firm to become an artist and a man with no previous musical training who started composing quartets.
``Paradoxically, for these people a period of exceptional creativity heralded the beginnings of a tragic disease,'' Miller said.
``It sort of emphasizes that we have to focus on the strengths of our patients instead of their deficits,'' he added in a telephone interview.
Patients who have frontotemporal dementia have lost cells in parts of the brain that regulate social behavior. This often causes personality changes.
It is often genetic, and develops in people in their 50s.
Encouraging creativity in patients in the early stages of the disease has health benefits. It may be therapeutic for them mentally to know that they can develop new abilities despite the disease and it is possible that the creative stimulation of the brain could slow the progress of the disease, Miller said.
The disease normally attacks the brain's frontal lobes -- responsible for complex thought and planning -- and the front part of the temporal lobes.
Miller studied 80 patients and found 24 of them had unaffected frontal lobes. Half of the patients with unaffected frontal lobes showed increased creative ability, ranging from writing music to inventing chemical detectors.
The patients' talents increased as their diseases progressed, according to the study, which Miller presented to the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in Minneapolis. One man won a patent for a chemical detector he invented at a time when he could name only one out of 15 items on a word test.
Another designed a home sprinkler system although he had lost his ability to speak.
Miller began to study creativity in dementia patients when a patient's son told him that that his father had started painting, and that the paintings were improving as the disease worsened.
^REUTERS