Prof. Ruth Geldati, a neurologist from the Rabin Medical Center explains that an Israeli study led by Prof. Rivka Islandberg from Tel Aviv University confirmed that Parkinson's patients who were very creative before they got sick continue to create, despite the motor limitation imposed on them.

She explains that although Parkinson's patients suffer from a significant motor disability, their creative ability is preserved. Moreover, patients who did not have an artistic inclination before the onset of the disease show an extraordinary creative ability, which is expressed in the skills of writing, painting, playing or composing. Pictures of Parkinson's patients are displayed in galleries around the world including New York and Paris. A number of exhibitions were also held in Israel where beautiful paintings drawn by Parkinson's patients were presented.

"One of the interesting phenomena that the patients report is the feeling of motor release while performing the piece. Some tell of an uncontrollable urge to create. There are patients with significant tremors whose drawings come out precise and sharp or when playing the fine motor movements improve," she says. 

According to her, in studies that examined the creative skills of patients compared to healthy subjects, it was found that patients have a better ability to describe abstract images, a better understanding of metaphors and a better ability to interpret abstract paintings. One of the hypotheses is that the creative impulse is related to the increase in the level of dopamine in the brain as a result of the treatment with anti-parkinson drugs, mainly dopa preparations and drugs from the group of dopaminergic agonists.

"Dopamine is not only related to improving motor abilities but also to stimulating receptors related to curiosity, satisfaction, addiction and lack of impulse control. Several works found a connection between the dosage of the drugs and the tendency to be creative. However, in the questionnaires that tested the tendency to control impulses, no connection was found with the levels of the drugs.

"Another hypothesis is that creativity does not result from an increase in the level of dopamine, but rather that the drugs cause a reduction of the brain's suppression mechanisms, thus enabling the expansion of the associative network and the development of creative thinking. Supporting evidence that the drugs do cause creativity was obtained after they saw that Parkinson's patients with a creative tendency underwent deep brain stimulation surgery, after which The dosage of the dopaminergic drugs was reduced, they lost their creative tendency."

Prof. Gildati concludes that not all Parkinson's patients develop a tendency to creativity, not even after receiving medication. Furthermore, healthy people who receive drugs that increase the level of dopamine do not necessarily develop a tendency to be creative. "It is possible that the fact that some of the brain cells in patients degenerate allows other areas of the brain to "express" and that the drugs raise the threshold of creativity in people whose creative drive was hidden and did not manifest itself before the onset of the disease."