Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance (19 page)

At the second stage of problem solving we look for less obvious solutions—a process that involves the activation of additional brain circuits. The key element here is to pay attention, focus on the problem, and inhibit irrelevant brain processes. If the solution still isn’t forthcoming, then we can further arouse the brain by increasing its oxygen supply (deep breathing; a short spurt of exercise such as push-ups or a run around the block), or we can shift the brain’s activation patterns away from the circuits associated with the words and logic by listening to instrumental music.

Finally, if a solution still isn’t forthcoming we can put the problem “out of mind” for a short period. Rest, relaxation, sleep—especially dream sleep—can help spawn the innovative associations needed for creative problem solving. (The answer to this puzzle is on page 194.)

Not only do we remember more of what we’ve learned after “sleeping on it,” we’re also more creative, according to Jessica Payne, an upbeat young sleep researcher from Harvard University. During my conversation with her, Payne told me of her experiment proving this. It involved volunteers learning a list of related words (for example,
thread, pin, eye, sewing, sharp, point, haystack
). After learning the list, Payne’s subjects were asked twelve hours later to recall as many words as they could. It turned out that their performance depended on whether or not they had slept in the interval. Half of the volunteers learned the list at nine a.m. and after a normal day for them returned for testing at nine p.m. The other half learned the list at nine p.m. and returned for testing the next morning at nine a.m.

Not only did the sleep group perform better in remembering the list, but those who had slept between the two testing sessions recalled two to three times as many novel or creative words.

“We found that sleep enhances creative associations between the words on the memorized list, thus encouraging the discovery of new and meaningful connections,” Payne enthusiastically exclaimed.

As Payne described her research, I thought of a famous experiment carried out many years ago by sleep researcher William Dement. He showed his students the letter sequence H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O and asked them to name the one word suggested by this sequence. They had to come up with a specific word relating to this particular string of letters. Responses such as “letter sequence” or “alphabet” weren’t allowed.

When none of the students came up with the correct reply, Dement suggested they “sleep on it” and see if the solution occurred to them. Next morning several of the students returned and reported their dreams.

One student reported several dreams. In one dream he encountered a barracuda while skin diving; in another, he was hunting sharks; in a third, he was sailing into the wind. Given those dreams, it can be reasonably concluded that the dreamer knew the answer on a subconscious level and had represented it repeatedly in his dream images even though he couldn’t come up with the answer:
water
(the sequence of letters proceeds from H to O, i.e., H
₂
O). The student had correctly arrived at the solution to the problem via his dream images in which water was the common element. None of the students who had not “slept” on the puzzle came up with similarly suggestive images.

Although dreams played a prominent part in the student’s solution to Dement’s puzzle, dreams aren’t necessary, according to Payne’s findings. Sleep alone enhances memory and consolidates it. This provides two distinct benefits: we remember more, and, as suggested in her experiments, our memories are more likely to be creative. “We found that sleep changes memories in a manner that encourages the discovery of new and meaningful connections,” Payne commented.

In his book
This Year You Write Your Novel,
Walter Mosley has this to say about how sleep furthers creativity: “While you sleep, mountains are moving deep within your psyche. When you wake up and return to the book, you will be amazed by the realization that you are further along than when you left off yesterday.”

REM sleep is especially effective in enhancing creativity. As mentioned earlier, REM is the stage of sleep when dreams occur. During REM weak mental associations are strengthened and flexible creative processing enhanced. The most famous example of sleep-associated creativity is August Kekulé’s discovery of the structure of the benzene ring. The chemical arrangement of benzene’s six carbon and six hydrogen rings came to Kekulé in a dream.

As a student Kekulé had testified before the equivalent of a grand jury investigating the sudden and unexplained death of one of his neighbors. Among the deceased’s belongings was a gold ring fashioned in the shape of two intertwined snakes biting their own tails—the alchemical symbol of the unity and variability of matter. After completing his testimony Kekulé never again consciously thought of the snakes.

One night many years later, after working unsuccessfully on the chemical arrangement of benzene’s six carbon and six hydrogen atoms, Kekulé “turned [his] chair and sank into a doze.” He dreamed of atoms swirling and dancing, joining together and then pulling apart in a snakelike pattern of motion. At that moment, in Kekulé’s words, “one of the serpents caught its own tail and the ring thus formed whirled exasperatingly before my eyes. I awoke as by lightning and spent the rest of the night working out the logical consequences of the hypothesis.”

Upon awakening, Kekulé envisioned the benzene molecule as a six-layered structure composed of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms suspended like charms from a bracelet. The unconscious memory of the signet ring revisited in his dream had stimulated the creative visualization needed to discover benzene’s structure.

Recent advances in neuroscience suggest what’s happening in the creative brain during each of the “power down” states (rest, relaxation, sleep, especially dream sleep). They all share a common mechanism: a change in the brain’s neurotransmitter systems.

“Creative individuals have a special ability to modulate the norepinephrine system, especially the connections of that system with the frontal lobes. During creative innovation, cerebral levels of norepinephrine diminish, leading to the discovery of novel orderly relationships,” says Kenneth Heilman, a distinguished professor of neurology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville.

A scholarly-appearing man with thin steel-rim glasses and a penchant for bow ties, Heilman has thought a lot about creativity during his own highly creative career of over half a century as one of the nation’s premier behavioral neurologists. During our conversation on creativity Heilman emphasized the importance of the frontal lobes and how we can enhance their functioning.

“The frontal lobes appear to be the part of the cortex that is most important for creativity. They are critical for divergent thinking—the ability to diverge from what one has been taught to believe—and the associated ability to come up with alternative solutions.”

To illustrate Heilman’s point, look again at the dot-sequence puzzle. Concentrating just on the dots leads to the wrong answer (no, thirty-six is not correct). So what other way can we approach the problem? Hint: Instead of thinking strictly in terms of dots, visualize the
geometry
of the evolving figure. With the two additions of eight dots (12 + 8 = 20 + 8 = 28), the figure begins to take on the conformation of a square. But it’s not quite a square. So how many dots would be required to complete the square? The correct solution (the addition of four dots to make a total of thirty-two dots) only comes to mind when you shift the emphasis from the dots to the figure as a whole. Only by engaging in such a shift in your thinking can you solve the puzzle. You must redirect your attention from counting dots to thinking in terms of a geometric figure (a square) formed by the dots. Divergent thinking provides the key insight to the puzzle’s solution.

Most likely you experienced one of three responses to the dot problem. First, the solution was immediately obvious to you. (If so, my apologies.) Second, you may have thought about the puzzle and slowly, via step-by-step reasoning, come up with the correct answer: “I’m certain that the ‘obvious answer’ can’t be the correct one. That means that the number of dots to be added must be less than eight, but by how many dots? Let’s just close the figure and count the dots needed to do that.” The third response may have involved an initial failure to come up with the solution, further pondering of the problem, and then a nearly instantaneous insightful resolution—the Aha! response.

Aha! is shorthand for the feeling that accompanies solving a problem with sudden insight and creativity. The prototype for this response is attributed to the Greek philosopher-scientist Archimedes. According to legend, the tyrannical king Hiero of Syracuse challenged Archimedes to find the solution to an unusual dilemma. Hiero suspected that an artisan had cheated him when fashioning one of his crowns by mixing silver with what should have been pure gold. Archimedes was charged with coming up with a test to allay or confirm the king’s suspicions. But in doing so he could not do anything that would damage the crown. This requirement eliminated the usual chemical tests for distinguishing pure gold from gold mixed with an adulterant.

The answer occurred to Archimedes in his bathtub. While lolling in the water he noticed that not only did the water rise but his weight seemed to decrease. In an instant—the Eureka! or Aha! moment—Archimedes realized that two objects of equal weight will displace different volumes of water when they are immersed, unless their densities are equal. Because silver is less dense than gold, the gold-silver alloy imitation did not displace the same amount of water as a solid gold crown.

Today we can identify the processes that likely took place in Archimedes’ brain as he achieved his insight (now known as Archimedes’ principle). Studies using fMRI and EEG techniques identify a different response when problems are solved by sudden insight as opposed to step-by-step logical deduction. About three hundred milliseconds (thousandths of a second) before the Aha! moment, a sudden burst of activity appears in the right hemisphere maximal in the anterior temporal area. According to the interpretation of the scientist carrying out the fMRI study, this right-hemisphere activity stimulates indirect associations: “making connections across distantly related information that allows for seeing connections that previously eluded them.”

Here is what happens in response to that right hemisphere stimulation: Ordinarily, our left hemisphere manages the everyday verbal-reasoning processes that we all use to solve problems not requiring creative solutions. But when this step-by-step approach fails to yield a solution—especially when a creative solution is called for—that high-activity burst from the right hemisphere projects to the left hemisphere, where it activates novel circuits that lead to forming the new associative linkages underlying the Aha! solution.

The importance of the right hemisphere for creativity was first discovered by means of a clever experiment. Problem solvers were given written hints suggesting the correct solution to a problem. The hints were placed on the screen so as to be read preferentially by either the left or the right hemisphere. Since the left hemisphere is specialized for reading and language in general, it would seem reasonable to assume that the hints would prove more effective when delivered there. But that isn’t what the experimenters found. Hints are more likely to be helpful if they’re read by the right hemisphere. At first this seems surprising, but upon reflection, it actually makes perfect sense: insightful solutions to problems require the creation of novel associations. The right hemisphere is specialized for this.

Here is an example of the right hemisphere providing a solution that eluded the efforts of the left hemisphere:

“What is the single word that can form a familiar compound word or phrase with
pine, crab,
and
sauce
?”

If you immediately come up with the answer (
apple,
which forms pineapple, crab apple, and applesauce), your left hemisphere will be doing most of the work. But if you have to work on it for several minutes before you suddenly “see” the answer via an Aha! experience, your right hemisphere will be preferentially activated, according to fMRI studies carried out by neuroscientists at Northwestern University.

In other words, solving a problem via the Aha! experience is qualitatively distinct from the usual left hemisphere- directed methods for problem solving. Creativity involves a shift in brain activation from left- to right-hemisphere processing. This allows the forging of novel associations. This shift from our usual left-hemisphere-dominant brain processing to the right hemisphere, with its novel patterns and circuits, is the basis for the pleasure we experience whenever we come up with a creative solution to a problem or puzzle.