Want to be more creative? Fancy a glass of wine or a pint of beer to get your creative juices flow. This is no hoax as it has been confirmed by a study published in the Journal Consciousness and Cognition. It says a small glass of wine or a pint of beer might help to let one’s creativity soaring high. The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for practical, logical and organised thought, while the right hemisphere is the one where the creativity comes from. But its more complex than it seemed to be. The study also revealed that those who consumed less alcohol had less focus and cognitive control.
"Alcohol is so linked with creativity," lead author Dr Mathias Benedek said. "Previous research has found almost half of the great writers had a history of drinking. We found that a small drink can indeed help with certain aspects of creativity. Moderate drinking could make it a little difficult to focus on work. It might well work for someone who is sitting down to do creative writing or brainstorming ideas in a boardroom," Benedek suggested.
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The participants of the study were given a bottle of normal beer while others in the study were given non-alcoholic beer. They were not able to differentiate between them. The participants were then given a series of word association task. They were asked to associate the words, Swiss, Blue and Cake. Those who consumed alcohol were more able to guess the answer correctly that cheese was the linking word as compared to those who didn’t have alcoholic drinks.
"There are two theories for how this works," explained Dr Benedek. "The first being that when you are really focusing on solving a problem, you can become fixated so that your mind gets stuck on one way of addressing it. Alcohol makes it more difficult to keep all the parameters of the task in mind, but that can also help you come at it from another direction. "
The second theory suggests that alcohol is distracting from the central task but also allows you to access your unconscious mind and find alternative solutions.
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