Eureka! We鈥檝e had the closest look yet at what happens in the brain when you experience a burst of genius. The insight may lead to ways to artificially push the brain into problem-solving mode.
To better understand strikes of inspiration, at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, and his colleagues used a type of fMRI to scan 29 people鈥檚 brains as they solved problems that were designed to elicit a eureka moment. These included puzzles that involved discovering that one particular word links three others, for example. When a participant felt an 鈥渁ha鈥� moment occur 鈥� such as figuring out the right word 鈥� they pressed a button to let the team know.
The scanner was sensitive enough to detect small changes in activity when this happened, including in deep structures in the midbrain that are involved in releasing the mood-boosting hormone dopamine. 鈥淲e found that neural activity in [these areas] is highest during aha moments, lower when our participants found a solution without having this special aha experience, and lowest when they were informed that they were not able to solve our riddle in time,鈥� says co-author .
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Feel-good factor
Dopamine makes us feel good and is involved in the brain鈥檚 reward systems, which helps explain why eureka moments feel so pleasing.
The scans also revealed that the prefrontal cortex is involved in aha moments too. This brain region is responsible for decision-making, and can be artificially boosted by brain stimulation devices. Tik is now working on fine-tuning the kind of stimulation you would need to create aha brain activity to potentially induce new insights.
As well as helping healthy people, such stimulation might also help people with psychiatric conditions that involve low motivation, he suggests.
Human Brain Mapping
