2. The Creativity Pill

Recently Rivka Inzelberg, a neurologist, noticed that her patients with Parkinson's disease seemed to be producing more stories, paintings, poems, etc., than others their age. The creativity boost was seen especially in those that were being treated with dopamine. A journal had published the idea that the creativity had something to do with obsessive tendencies. However, Inzelberg did research on the matter and came to a conclusion that there was no connection between the two. She did find that the patients that had higher doses of the medication did 'better' on her creativity tests. The are proposed mechanisms as to why the drug causes an increase in creativity. One of them has to do with the idea that people who suffer from psychosis and are medicated tend to have increased creative thinking. Some examples of this would be Van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Wolf had psychotic episodes or were treated with dopamine. Inzelberg says she is not sure what would happen if a "normal" person were to take the drug with the intent of increasing their creativity. There is still more research to be done to come to a final conclusion.

The author, James Hamblin, really captures the attention of the reader at the introduction of the article by making it sound like a mystery that people were becoming creative.The reader becomes interested and wants to keep reading to find the answer. It is easy to infer that Hamblin interviewed Inzelberg on the matter based on that fact that: he mentions that he talked with her on the phone, used many of her quotes, and says that it seemed that had she guessed one of his next questions. A lot of biological and medical language is used that isn't necessarily common knowledge. This causes the article to be somewhat confusing at certain parts, but the main idea comes through. At one point Hamblin did add some irrelevant information, about where Inzelberg was, that left the reader curious. The article was informative and does not completely solve the mystery but  leaves it open for the reader to decide what they think.              

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/creativity-and-dopamine-pills/374599/