Insightfulness

For many regular M&M readers, the blog is a healthy way to avoid work. Situated on our desktops, only a mouse click away, it provides us with a welcome distraction from what we get paid (or get degrees) to do. However, despite the hours that I've probably dumped into reading and writing on here in short spurts while the work clock is ticking over the last 6 months (yes, we've been online that long!), I've always felt that it actually improves my productivity to have a little online sanctuary like this. That's right. Being able to get away for a few minutes every hour or so is refreshing and allows me - and I hope all of you - to return to the regularly scheduled program with new energy, focus, and insight.

A fascinating article in this week's The New Yorker is such a wonderful validation of the above premise that I have to share the insight on these pages, the very source of my productive distraction. "The Eureka Hunt" examines how and why epiphanies strike us at the neurological level, and it reveals some very interesting things about the way we process "ah-ha!" moments. In a nutshell: epiphanies are a different breed of idea than one arrived at through concerted effort. We don't consciously produce them; they just seem to arrive like lighting bolts, and when they do, there is a sense of metaphysical certitude that they are correct. They don't need to be fact checked - we already know they are right, even as they are just emerging from the electrical storm of our brains.

Most of our rational, linear thought functions come from the left hemisphere of the brain. (I hope we get some comments on this from our resident neuroscientist Ben - I'm getting all this from one article!) Since much of rational thought and language processing originates here, people with damage to the right hemisphere can often seemingly function just fine. But when researchers look closer, it becomes clear that, despite functional use of language, reasoning skills, etc., those with right lobe damage suffer from an inability to read nuance into words and into abstract problems. To really get a metaphor (or a subtle joke), you have to have communication across the corpus callosum. And this abstract interpretive ability is precisely the engine behind insight. In fact, if people try to verbalize what they're thinking in the act of trying to solve a word puzzle, an act that will result in a minor epiphany when the answer comes to you, they do significantly poorer at solving the problem (a phenomenon called "verbal overshadowing"). In other words, focusing entirely with your logical mind on a problem stifles the insight that can crack the code.

A number of recent papers, drawing on experimental research using EEG and fMRI scans of subjects' brains as they attempt to solve riddles, show that very specific cortical areas light up when a "Eureka!" moment is involved. The basic finding is this: the left brain will process a problem as it does - linearly, logically - but the remote association that provides insight originates in the right hemisphere. Thus, if someone concentrates really hard on a problem without relaxing their minds a bit to allow the quiet right lobe to have its occasional say, their chances of genuine creative insight are considerably diminished. This finding, researchers say, is a problem for the stimulant-addicted academic community (stimulants encourage left brain concentration). Relaxation, then, is the key to epiphany.

I've always done my best cerebration at three times: while walking, while in the shower, and early in the morning, just after waking up. Amazingly, researchers have identified both the early morning and hot showers as common triggers for insight. (The positive mental effects of late night neighborhood strolls will certainly be discovered someday.) So next time you're stuck on something, put down the book and hop in the shower. (A coincidence that Archimedes was in the bath at the time of his insight?)

Einstein came up with his most brilliant ideas in moments of insight, not in front of the chalk board doing equations. Richard Feynman, Nobel-winning physicist, always came up with his greatest insights at the topless bar, where he would begin to shape his new ideas mathematically on his napkin. Henri Poincare's seminal reinterpretation of Euclidian geometry came while he was stepping onto a bus. Of course, these stories aren't to say that these famous people hadn't been deeply contemplating their problems well before the koan was answered; in fact, this is why scientists suggest that epiphanies come with a sense of certitude - the left hemisphere has already done the math, it just couldn't come up with the precise solution.

So, good M&M readers, a bit of validation for the day dreaming that has brought you here today. Next time you get distracted and your mind wanders, let it.