traits, such as a tendency for "thinking outside the box," flights of ideas, the speeding up of thoughts and heightened perception of visual, auditory and somatic stimuli. It has been found that the brains of creative people are more open to environmental stimuli due to smaller amounts of latent inhibition, an individual's unconscious capacity to ignore unimportant stimuli. While the absence of this ability is associated with psychosis, it has also been found to contribute to original thinking. Emotions Many people with bipolar disorder may feel powerful emotions during both depressive and manic phases, potentially aiding in creativity. Because mania and hypomania may decrease social inhibition, performers who have bipolar disorder may become more daring and bold during an episode. Other creators may exhibit characteristics often associated with mental illness that are not necessarily equivalent to a full-blown manic episode. Posthumous diagnosis Some creative people have been posthumously diagnosed as experiencing bipolar or unipolar disorder based on biographies, letters, correspondence, contemporaneous accounts, or other anecdotal material, most notably in Kay Redfield Jamison's book Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. Touched with Fire presents the argument that bipolar disorder, and affective disorders more generally, may be found in a disproportionate number of people in creative professions such as actors, artists, comedians, musicians, authors, performers and poets. Scholars have also speculated that the visual artist Michelangelo lived with depression. In the book Famous Depressives: Ten Historical Sketches, MJ Van Lieburg argues that elements of depression are prominent in some of Michelangelo's sculptures and poetry. Van Lieburg also draws additional support from Michelangelo's letters to his father in which he states: "I lead a miserable existence and reck not of life nor honour - that is of this world; I live wearied by stupendous labours and beset by a thousand anxieties. And thus I lived for some fifteen years now and never an hour's happiness have I had." Positive correlation Several recent clinical studies have also suggested that there is a positive correlation between creativity and bipolar disorder, although the relationship between the two is unclear. Temperament may be an intervening variable. Ambition has also been identified as being linked to creative output in people across the bipolar spectrum. Can Music Make You Sick? Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition by Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave suggests that high levels of self-reported anxiety and depression amongst musicians can be