38 | October• 2018HOW TO CREATE AN AHA! MOMENTK
NOWN ASa somatic marker,
a hunch is ‘a physiological
clue to what to do next’, as
neurobiologist Dr Antonio Dama-
sioputsit.Weignoregutinstinct
at our peril, for it’s the product of
evolutionary hard wiring. Like bud-
ding thoughts, budding feelings are
evaluated based on their biological
significance.Onlythefittestare
selected to reach consciousness.
Strong emotions create loud signals.
heytellthebrain,here’s something
importanthere–you’dbetterput
some horses on this.
Ahunch,then,isakindofpre-
aha!.Ifintuitionisindeedatrainable
faculty, then it would seem to involve
sharpening our emotional sensitiv-
ity.Getgoodatthecareandfeeding
of hunches, and we might prime our-
selves for insight.
Thismaybewhatpromptedone
woman’s epiphany when she stum-
bled upon a Facebook photo of a
couple she barely knew. Something
about the way the happy duo looked,
the way they just fitted together,
hitherlikeagutpunchandputher
ownmarriageintoperspective.The
woman, who prefers to remain anon-
ymous, called a friend and blurted, “I
thinkImarriedthewrongperson.”
She had always prided herself on
her rationality; indeed, she had func-
tioned “almost like the producer in my
own marriage”, pencil poised to tick off
everything that needed to be done: get
settled, get pregnant, build a life. “ButSuddenly,hecrackedthenut.He
knewhowtoexplainhowtheresting
brain could be active without having
been deliberately activated. He had,
you might say, anaha!about ahas.
“Tenyears’worthofworkon
activationwassuddenlyrelevantto
solving the default mode problem,”
says Dr Raichle. The leap would
amount to the biggest breakthrough
of his career – his paper on the de-
fault mode has been cited more than
8500 times. It’s an affirmation of
Louis Pasteur’s famous line: “Chance
favours the prepared mind.”
here is one more thing that is im-
portanttokeepinmind(sotospeak)
asyouapproachthetaskofcultivat-
ing anaha!:timingiscritical.Ifwe
stayinthedeliberatemodetoolong,
wecandrivethesolutionaway.But
ifwebackoffaproblemtoosoon,
before we have all the puzzle pieces,
we prevent the solution from coa-
lescing.Thekeymaybeknowing
when to zoom in tight on a problem
andwhentopullbacksothatwe
don’tcrushthetendershootofan
insightjustasit’semerging.
“Ithinkthatpartoftheformulais
the tension between the two modes,
this back-and-forth between being
very focused and not,” says Dr Bee-
man.Drawingbackfromtheprob-
lemputsusinapositiontoboostthe
underlying signal of the hunch that’s
quietlydevelopingsothatitpene-
trates the conscious mind. You might
call this training our intuition.