36 | October• 2018
HOW TO CREATE AN AHA! MOMENT
focused on completing a task. This
was the 2001 discovery of Washington
University neuroscientist Dr Marcus
Raichle, who, in observing the resting
brain, saw that there was essentially
a party going on in the dark. he de-
fault mode network, as Dr Raichle
came to call it, is crackling with ac-
tivity, burning perhaps 20 times the
metabolic resources of the conscious
brain. So the brain’s resting-state
circuitry – which is turned on, para-
doxically, when you stop focusing on
a problem and just veg out – is very
likely the best place to park a prob-
lem, for it employs the best, wisest
and most creative (though not nec-
essarily fastest-working) mechanics.U
NFORTUNATELYthe unfo-
cused brain, while a great
tool where genuine solutions
lurk, is frustratingly beyond our con-
trol. If you’re struggling with a thorny
problem, is it possible to jump cog-
nitive tracks to that place? Instead of
spending time incubating a solution,
could you consciously keep doggedly
trying things instead?
This deliberate mode of attack is
the one we typically tryirst. here are
many small contradictions hidden in
any big problem: when you identify
them and follow a set of rules to re-
solve them, as a computer program
might, that gives you a critical leg up.
If A dead-ends, then move on to B. But
truly novel solutions are hardly ever
discovered that purposefully.them from outside than something
their own minds had generated. It
felt foreign, mystical even. Which
may explain why so many historical
accounts of revelations have been
interpreted as communications from
the divine. In more recent years,
studiesoftheneuroscienceofinsight
havebeguntogiveuscluestowhat
they really are.
In2003,DrMarkBeeman,acogni-
tive neuroscientist, presented people
with a series of brainteasers. he test
heused,calledthe‘remoteassociates
test’, is designed to produce leaps of
thought. It asks subjects to provide
themissinglinkamongthreeseem-
inglyunrelatedwords–say,pine,
sauceandtree. (People sometimes
exclaim“A h a! ”when the wordapple
pops to mind.)
The subjects were also wired to
machines that captured their brains’
electrical activity. “Two seconds be-
fore the conscious insight, we see this
burst of activity over the back of the
brain,” says Dr Beeman. The brain,
he thinks, “is blocking visual input,
which helps allow weaker informa-
tion to compete for attention.” When
a thought entered the subjects’ con-
sciousness –aha!– the neocortex, the
part of the brain associated with sight
and hearing, lit up like a Christmas
tree. he conscious brain takes credit,
one could say, for the heavy lifting
done behind the scenes.
The brain in ‘idle’ – it turns out –
can be far more active than the brain