When discussing creativity, researchers often refer to the phenomenon of insight into an issue. This is a moment of sudden understanding when an idea occurs to us of how to deal with an ambiguous situation.
American neurologist Mark Beeman and cognitive psychologist from Drexel University John Kounios conducted research at the turn of the 21st century, in which they used EEG and fMRI to monitor the brains of participants who were trying to solve a situation with the help of given remote associates problems (insight problems).
The remote associates problems were defined as word puzzles. Subjects were given three words - such as pine, crab and sauce - and asked to find a fourth word to complement them all. Some participants in the experiment solved the problem logically by simply testing one word after another. Others focused on the problem through insight, which means that the right answer simply comes to mind at the right time. Only a handful of people combined both strategies.
What Beeman and Kounios discovered was a noticeable shift in brain function. Just before the participants became acquainted with the problem, which they finally solved with insight, there was increased activity in their cerebral cortex (ACC). The ACC plays a role in executive attention and is the part that handles error correction by detecting conflicting signals in the brain.
According to Kounios, alternative strategies include problem solving. The brain cannot employ two different strategies simultaneously. Some are strongly activated as they are most obvious. Others are weak and only remotely associated with the problem. And it is these seemingly secondary ideas that are creative. When the ACC is activated, it can detect them and tell the brain to focus on them. That is an aha moment.
Beeman and Kounios have found that the ACC is activated when we start thinking of ideas that seem to have little to do with the topic. Which begs the key question: what exactly activates the ACC? The answer from the research: a good mood.
When we are in a good mood, the ACC is more sensitive to odd ideas. In other words, if an active ACC is a condition of readiness to gain insight into a topic, a good mood is a condition of readiness for an active ACC.
The opposite is also true: while a good mood increases creativity, a bad mood strengthens analytical thinking. The brain reduces our options to the tried and tested by focusing on obvious things and certainties that we know will work. On the other hand, when in a good mood we feel safe: we are able to give the ACC more time to heed weak signals and we are also more willing to take risks. This is important because creativity always contains an element of risk.
While a good mood is the starting point for increased creativity, a combination of daily exercise of gratitude and mindfulness, physical exercise and quality rest remain the best recipe for happiness found so far. All of these factors encourage creativity.
Gratitude trains the brain to focus on the positive and change its normally negatively biased tendencies to filter information. It influences our mood, and a good mood gives our neural network a better position to create something surprisingly new.
Mindfulness, in turn, teaches the brain to be calm, focused, unreactive, and to amplify powerful attention. It also offers a little space between thought and feeling, and allows the ACC more time to consider alternatives.
Exercise reduces stress levels, flushes cortisol out of our system and increases neurochemicals that feel good, including serotonin, norepinephrine, endorphins and dopamine. This reduces anxiety, increases our good mood, and increases the ACC's ability to detect more distant possibilities. In addition, the time limit provided by the exercise acts as an incubation period.
A good night's rest provides additional benefits. It increases energy levels and provides resources to address challenges. The resulting sense of security lifts our mood and increases our willingness to take risks. In addition, sleep is the most crucial incubation time of all. When we sleep, the brain has time to find all sorts of hidden links between ideas.
Are you paying sufficient attention to all these factors?
-bb-