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Harvard Neurologist Looks at Cannabis and Creativity

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Over the last few centuries, visual artists, songwriters and musicians have claimed that cannabis boosts creativity and appreciation for music and art. One neurologist is attempting to find a tangible link between cannabis and creativity.

Does cannabis stimulate creativity in the brain? “The answer isn’t black and white,”  Dr. Alice Weaver Flaherty told Artsy. Flaherty is a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School. As an expert on brain stimulation, and after extensive research, Flaherty believes the solution can be pinpointed in the frontal lobe of the brain.

Cannabis, like all other stimulants, boosts the body in many ways, including creativity. But no two people are the same, and cannabis may affect people’s creativity in different ways, depending on their body.

“A very anxious creative person may get some benefit from cannabis. In calming them down, it could help their creativity,” Flaherty said. “But for someone who’s already in the zone, and who’s not too anxious to work, it might push them into a place of being too laid back.”

Cannabis and creativity can be easily linked in art and music history. When Bob Dylan introduced all four Beatles to cannabis on August 28, 1964, many critics have pointed out how their sound drastically changed in the following months, dropping their “bubblegum” pop format. Visually, cannabis helped shaped the style of pop art during the ’60s, after the plant’s exploding popularity in America.

In the innovative tech world, cannabis has been attributed to creativity as well. “The best way I would describe the effect of the marijuana and the hashish is that it would make me relaxed and creative,” iPod and iPhone innovator Steve Jobs said, during a government background check. In comedy, similar attitudes exist. “If you think about the brain as a series of folders that you keep creating, weed for me is like a program that puts them all in order alphabetically and allows you to prioritize what is important,” Kevin Smith told CULTURE in 2013.

There are many artists out there who don’t need a study to confirm what cannabis has done for them for their entire careers.

 

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