Eureka Anatomy

Here is a lift from a reveries entry about a WSJ article...

"Solving a problem with insight is fundamentally different from solving a problem analytically," says Dr. John Kounios in a Wall Street Journal piece by Robert Lee Holtz (6/19/09). "There really are different brain mechanisms involved." John is a psychologist at Drexel and knows this because he and Mark Jung-Beeman of Northwestern have "used brain scanners and EEG sensors to study insights taking form below the surface of self-awareness." They basically gave subjects word puzzles and then watched their brains work.

Some tried slogging their way through the puzzles methodically, others were stumped, but a third group seemed to arrive at the answers "out of nowhere" and yet were certain they were correct. Within that third group, "the EEG recordings revealed a distinctive flash of gamma waves emanating from the brain's right hemisphere, which is involved in handling associations and assembling elements of a problem. The brain broadcast that signal one-third of a second before a volunteer experienced their conscious moment of insight -- an eternity at the speed of thought."

In addition, "they found that tell-tale burst of gamma waves was almost always preceded by a change in alpha brain-wave intensity in the visual cortex, which controls what we see. They took it as evidence that the brain was dampening the neurons there similar to the way we consciously close our eyes to concentrate." The study suggests that "our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wandering and we've actually lost track of our thoughts." It also found that "people in a positive mood were more likely to experience an insight." ~ Tim Manners, editor