Objective:

We performed a systematic review to examine the current understanding of the effects of the dopaminergic and noradrenergic systems on performance on tasks associated with creativity.

Background:

Considerable recent work has emerged regarding the neural mechanisms involved in performance on tasks associated with creativity.  However, less is known regarding factors that impact such performance.  A range of factors are known to affect performance on tasks associated with creativity, including stress, pharmacology, behavioral interventions, and neural stimulation strategies. Most of the pharmacological impacts have focused on the dopaminergic and noradrenergic systems. However, some evidence suggests that these systems may differ in their impact on performance on divergent and convergent tasks.   Therefore, we systematically reviewed the literature to understand what is currently known about the contributions of these pharmacological systems.

Design/Methods:

We performed a systematic PubMed review examining the results for 'creativity and (dopamine or dopaminergic)' and 'creativity and (norepinephrine or noradrenergic or adrenergic)', adding other known articles not yielded buy these searches. 

Results:

The dopaminergic search yielded 236 articles. The noradrenergic search yielded 101 articles. The articles were screened for actually targeting these systems (for example, by pharmacological intervention or by examining genetics relevant to these systems), and examining performance on divergent or convergent tasks. Results of review of the qualifying articles consistently supported an impact of the dopaminergic system on divergent task performance, and suggested impact of the noradrenergic system on convergent task performance, but often required additional factors such as stress to reveal robust effects.

Conclusions:

This review suggests differential impact of the dopaminergic system and noradrenergic system on divergent and convergent task performance, but studies to systematically address this question across conditions are lacking, and would be needed going forward.