In today's innovation economy, engineers, economists and policy makers are eager to foster creative thinking among knowledge workers.
Of course, we've all had our "Aha" moments. They materialize without warning, often through conversations with your personal coach or an unconscious shift in mental perspective that can abruptly alter how we perceive a problem.
It happened to Archimedes in the bath. To Descartes it took place in bed while watching flies on his ceiling. And to Newton it occurred in an orchard, when he saw an apple fall. Each had a moment on insight. To Archimedes came a way to calculate density and volume; to Descartes, the idea of coordinate geometry; and to Newton, the law of universal gravity. To these epiphanies, we owe the concept of alternating electrical current, the discovery of penicilin, and on a less lofty note, the invention of Post-its, ice cream cones, and Velcro.
Lately, researchers have been able to document the brain's behavior during Eureka moments by recording brain wave patterns and imaging the neural circuits that become active as volunteers struggle to solve anagrams, riddles and other brain teasers.
These sudden insights, they found, are the culmination of an intense and complex series of brain states that require more neural resources than methodical reasoning. People who solve problems through insight generate different patterns of brain waves than those who solve problems analytically. In fact, our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wandering and we've actually lost track of our thoughts, a new brain-scanning study suggests.
"People assumed that when your mind wandered it was empty," says cognitive neuroscientist Kalina Christoff at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, who reported the findings last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As measured by brain activity, however, "mind wandering is a much more active state than we ever imagined, much more active than during reasoning with a complex problem."
She suspects that the flypaper of an unfocused mind may trap new ideas and unexpected associations more effectively than methodical reasoning. That may create the mental framework for new ideas. "You can see regions of these networks becoming active just prior to people arriving at an insight," she says.
"Nothing happens unless first a dream." Carl Sandburg
So far, no one knows why problems sometimes trigger an insight or what makes us more inclined to the Eureka experience at some moments but not at others. Insight does favor a prepared mind, researchers determined.
Taken together, these findings highlight a paradox of mental life. They remind us that much of our creative thought is the product of neurons and nerve chemistry outside our awareness and beyond our direct control.
Source: Science Journal, The Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2009
"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters." Thoreau