• Posted October 15, 2025

ADHD 'Wandering Minds' Linked To Increased Creativity

ADHD appears to enhance creativity, a benefit that comes if a wandering mind is nudged in the right direction, a pair of new studies have concluded.

Folks with more symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder score higher on creative tests, researchers reported Saturday at a meeting of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) in Amsterdam.

This is likely due to their tendency to let their minds wander — shifting attention away from whatever task is at hand toward internally generated thoughts, researchers said.

“We found that people with more ADHD traits such as lack of attention, hyperactivity or impulsivity, score higher on creative achievements in both studies,” said lead researcher Han Fang, a doctoral student with Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

“Additionally, we found that mind wandering, particularly deliberate mind wandering, where people allow their ‘thoughts to wander on purpose,’ was associated with greater creativity in people with ADHD,” Fang said in a news release. “This suggests that mind wandering may be an underlying factor connecting ADHD and creativity.”

The study shows one of the potentially positive benefits of what is normally considered a disruptive behavioral disorder, experts said.

"Mind wandering is one of the critical resources on which the remarkable creativity of high-functioning ADHD individuals is based,” said Dr. K.P. Lesch, a professor of molecular psychiatry at the University of Wurzburg in Germany.

“This makes them such an incredibly valuable asset for our society and the future of our planet,” Lesch, who was not involved in the study, added in a news release.

For the studies, researchers compared two groups of ADHD patients with people who don’t have the disorder, including 347 in Europe and 403 in the U.K.

Participants’ ADHD traits were evaluated, along with their functional impairments, mind wandering, divergent thinking and creativity.

Everyone has a certain amount of mind wandering, but it tends to occur more often in people with ADHD, Fang said.

“Previous researchers have been able to distinguish two different types of mind wandering,” Fang said. “It can be a loss of concentration, where your mind may drift from subject to subject. This is ‘spontaneous mind-wandering.’ Another type is ‘deliberate mind wandering,’ where people give themselves the freedom to drift off-subject, where they allow their thoughts to take a different course.”

Results showed that both inattentiveness and hyperactivity-impulsivity among ADHD patients was linked with both creativity and mind wandering.

In particular, deliberate mind wandering was tied to greater inventiveness and imagination, researchers found.

On the other hand, spontaneous mind wandering tended to contribute to the sort of functional impairments typically found among people with ADHD, researchers said.

“This may have practical implications, for both psychoeducation and treatment,” Fang said. “For psychoeducation, specially designed programs or courses that teach individuals how to utilize their spontaneous ideas, for example turning them into creative outputs, could help individuals with ADHD traits harness the benefits of mind wandering.”

Fang continued: “For treatment, ADHD-tailored mindfulness-based interventions that seek to decrease spontaneous mind wandering or transform it into more deliberate forms may reduce functional impairments and enhance treatment outcomes." 

It is, Fang said, the first time this link has been investigated, so more research will be needed to confirm the findings.

Findings reported at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The National Institute of Mental Health has more on ADHD.

SOURCE: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, news release, Oct. 11, 2025