I remember reading an essay once on Nautilus Magazine about Shakespeare’s use of language, and how the inventiveness and elasticity of his language stretched the reader’s mind, or the audience’s mind, by forcing you to go where he’s going with his words, with his metaphors, with his similes. What that did to people’s brains is that it released more dopamine. It actually gave you a high by forcing you to places using language that were more vast and interesting than normal, simple language.

I think that it’s a good exercise to loosen that sort of focus and inner critic that we normally have in relation to being asked to comment on what we think of a particular idea. The guys behind the Flow Genome Project say that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for self-editing, goes dim when we’re in “the zone”, when we’re in the flow, and we’re in the pocket. It doesn’t matter if it’s a jazz musician improvising, or a basketball player or a snowboarder achieving the impossible on a jump, or a writer getting into the zone verbally.

Your self doubt, your inner critic, goes quiet, and creativity goes up, pattern recognition increases, dopamine levels go up, and you surprise yourself.

– Jason Silva (here, via Swiss Miss)(my emphasis)