This is where we retrieve straightforward or contextually relevant definitions of words or concepts. Generally speaking, the left hemisphere of our brains is where we process the dominant meanings of things. It may be a cliché to talk about the “left brain” and the “right brain,” but at the same time, it’s critical to our understanding of where creative ideas originate. Not only do flashes of genius have a unique electrical pattern in the brain, they also have their own discrete location. What they found was that when participants reported aha moments, activity showed up in the right hemisphere of their brains. To find out, Bowden and the team of researchers repeated the experiment while monitoring the subjects using an fMRI machine. We don’t even realize our brains are doing what they’re doing - which is why all this unseen work ultimately leads to what we think of as aha moments. So where exactly did the solution come from? Finding the Aha Have you ever looked at a crossword puzzle question and were unable to come up with a solution? Then, very suddenly, the answer hits you? Well, this feeling of being struck with a sudden solution is reflected by the activity in the gamma bands. This means aha moments exhibit their own unique brain wave pattern. The researchers believe that this burst in electrical activity signals when the solution enters a person’s consciousness. When participants solved problems via flashes of genius, there was a burst of gamma band activity 0.3 seconds before they came up with an answer. It’s one of the brain waves the scientists were most interested in studying. On the surface at least, there seemed to be a minimal difference between these two methods regardless of which one was experienced, the solutions showed up roughly ten seconds later.īut the EEG readings told a very different story.Įlectrical brain waves in the gamma band are thought to be activated when our brains engage in perception and language. Once they came up with an answer, they were then asked whether or not the solution came as an aha moment or as the result of logical analysis.įifty-six percent of the answers were attributed to an aha moment, 42 percent to logical analysis, while the remaining 2 percent checked neither box. When connected to the EEG machine, the participants wore goggles that revealed one of the word puzzles, and were given thirty seconds to solve it. Were they truly a magical experience, or was there perhaps a biological explanation for them?Īs part of their study, they tasked subjects to solve various of these word puzzles while connected to an EEG (electroencephalography) monitor, which can quickly detect the moments when electrical activity takes place in the brain, or an fMRI machine, which as a reminder, is the machine that can pinpoint where brain activity is taking place by measuring blood flow in the brain.īowden and his team hoped that by using these two machines they could see both when and where the brain was activated during aha moments. Bowden, along with a team from Northwestern University’s Creative Brain Lab and Drexel University, sought to understand the neuroscience behind aha moments. Since these kinds of puzzles can be solved using either approach, they give researchers insights into the science of aha moments.Įdward Bowden is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Parkside. With these solutions, the answer to the puzzle would come immediately upon seeing it or after a delay, but without conscious thought. Logical analysis is straightforward: You ponder whether a word “works” and think through the puzzle logically, step by step.Īha moments are the flashes of genius we’ve talked about throughout the book. These kinds of word puzzles tend to fascinate scientists because, depending on the person’s experiences, they can be solved either through logical analysis or via aha moments. If you came up with the solution, how’d you do it? Did it pop into your head instantly, or did you pore through various possible solutions? If you didn’t get it at all, what was your approach as you tried to figure it out? The answer is “ice” (ice cream, ice skate, ice water). Can you think of a single word that could be put next to all three and still make sense?
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