Gulp a glass of wine to get your creative juices flow

We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine. Wine is bottled poetry.

A glass of wine is all you need to get the creative juices flow.

Although many believe the left hemisphere is responsible for practical, logical and organized thought, and the right is where creativity comes from, it's much more complex than that.

According to the Independent, a small glass of wine or a pint of beer helps unleash creativity, Austrian scientists have found.

Alcohol is linked to creativity as previous research has found almost half of the great writers had a history of drinking.

A small drink can indeed help with certain aspects of creativity," said lead author, Dr Mathias Benedek .

"It might well work for someone who is sitting down to do creative writing or brainstorming ideas in a boardroom," Benedek suggested.

Some participants were given a bottle of normal beer whilst others were given a non-alcoholic beer, which they weren't able to distinguish between.

They were subsequently given a series of word association tasks, for example, they were asked to link the "swiss", "blue" and "cake".

Those who had drunk alcohol were more likely to correctly guess that cheese was the linking word.

The alcohol-drinkers also exceeded in a creative thinking task, in which they had to suggest alternative uses for tyres.

The research also revealed that those who had consumed the alcohol had less focus and "cognitive control".

There are two theories for how this works. First being that when you are really focusing on solving a problem, you can become fixated so that your mind gets stuck on one way of addressing it. Alcohol makes it more difficult to keep all the parameters of the task in mind, but that can also help you come at it from another direction.

The second theory is that alcohol, which is distracting from the central task, allows you to tap into your unconscious mind and find alternative solutions, explained Benedek.

.