The notion of the tortured artist has become a given to all of us today. The idea states that creativity is fueled by the artists' demons that they wrestle with in the night. And though the common notion has long intrigued scientists, a new study now claims that there may be a link between the two in the molecules of our DNA.

In a study published this week, in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists from Iceland have reported that genetic factors which may raise the risk of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are found more often in people with creative professions. Overall, painters, musicians, writers and dancers were 25 percent more likely to carry the gene variants than those who worked professions that were judged to be less creative, such as farmers, manual laborers and even salespeople.

"To be creative you have to think differently," says Kari Stefansson, founder and CEO of deCODE, a genetics company in Reykjavik. "And when we are different, we have a tendency to be labelled stranger, crazy and even insane."

For the new study, researchers examined the medical information from 86,000 Icelanders to find genetic variants that doubled the risk of schizophrenia, and raised the risk of bipolar disorder by more than one third. They then looked at how common these variants were in members of national arts societies, finding a 17 percent increase when compared to individuals who were not members.

Next, the researchers went on to check their findings with larger medical databases held in the Netherlands and Sweden. Among these patients, those deemed creative were 25 percent more likely to carry the mental disorder variants.

"Often, when people are creating something new, they end up straddling between sanity and insanity," Stefansson says. "I think these results support the old concept of the mad genius. Creativity is a quality that has given us Mozart, Bach, Van Gogh. It's a quality that is very important for our society. But it comes at a risk to the individual, and 1% of the population pays the price for it."

However, Stefansson concedes that the study only found a weak link between the gene variants for mental illness and creativity. The study found that the genetic factors that raise the risk of mental problems explained only about 0.25 percent of the variation in peoples' artistic ability.

David Cutler, a geneticist at Emory University in Atlanta, says that "if the distance between me, the least artistic person you are going to meet, and an actual artist is one mile, these variants appear to collectively explain 13 feet of the distance."

Still, even a small overlap is fascinated to Stefansson. "It means that a lot of the good things we get in life, through creativity, come at a price. It tells me that when it comes to our biology, we have to understand that everything is in some way good and in some way bad."