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The ability to concentrate on a task is a prized skill—the secret to success, many claim. But recent research suggests that intense focus on a problem does not always usher the fastest progress or, at least, such focus is not always sufficient for the necessary brainstorm. Insights often occur subconsciously while the mind wanders, reports Josie Glausiusz in the March/April Scientific American MIND. Albert Einstein, for example, came up with his theory of relativity only after letting his thoughts stray from the mathematics itself.
Grand schemes can also coalesce out of the blue, when you are doing something that requires little concentration—leaving room for spacing out. Great thinkers such as the Greek mathematician Archimedes, physicist Leo Szilard, organic chemist August Kekulé and biochemist Kary Mullis came up some of their key revelations while engaging in a mundane activity such as walking, driving or bathing. In other words, taking a break can sometimes give you that big break.
Mental diversions are sometimes in the form of detailed fantasies. Devout daydreamers may take refuge in imaginary worlds for hours to days. Frittering the day away in such settings might seem frivolous, but in some cases the practice spawns great works of art. The famous books penned by the Brontë sisters grew out of their persistent pretending as children, and Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk depends on such distraction to furnish fodder for his novels. The slides that follow describe the reveries and fantasies that led to the scientific and creative insights of these great thinkers and writers.
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20 Comments
Add CommentThese slideshows aimed at craming six pages of ads in a row are so annoying.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCouldn't read more than two pages.
Cognitive science has told us a lot about the brain since George Miller reported his shocking findings in 1956 about the miniscule capacity of the brain's short term memory (STM). He called it a bottleneck on the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat suggested that the brain did not evolve for conscious thinking, that it evolved to produce responses from long term memory (LTM) that required records of particular situations which, when recognised, produced an automatic response.
That mechanism was observed using connections to individual neurons in Macaque brains. A familiar image triggered a fast response. When a novel feature was introduced, the fast response was inhibited and replaced by a modified or new response worked out in conscious STM that was slower and more variable.
This suggests that the human brain evolved a large LTM to store a large number of scenarios needed to produce the high level of skills and wide range of behaviours required to make humans expert hunter gatherers. Lack of innovation for millions of years is evidence that the large brain did not evolve to think, but to not-think, to produce fast, automatic, expert responses to a wide range of situations.
For millions of years the large brain evolved among pre-verbal ancestors to pass on from generation to generation behaviours that worked. Behaviours that did not work were eliminated with the individuals who used them and did not survive.
That model fits the data, and if it that is what the human brain evolved to do, present day humans use it in ways the brain did not evolve to be used.
Richard Nesbitt has shown us that people in different cultures use the brain in different ways. People in western cultures make much greater use of conscious, logical thinking (in limited STM). Most of Edward de Bono's techniques are designed to break the constraints of logic in western cultures. Having constraints in STM suggests that data in the LTM is less constrained by contextual connections.
So maybe westerners use the brain that evolved to load existing hunter gatherer practices into its large LTM now loads lots of knowledge and ideas, connections among which are less structured, making records more available for non-conscious processing, as long as conscious control from the LTM can be diverted.
In effect, the mechanism that inhibited innovation for millions of years is now used in a different way to produce the innovations that mark the difference between modern complex societies and the simple societies of hunter gatherer ancestors among whom the large brain evolved.
The caption for Einstein is incorrect. It says that "Einstein imagined two bolts of lightning striking the front and back of a moving train at the same instant. He realized that those strikes would NOT seem simultaneous to a person standing next to the track even if they DID seem so to an individual on the moving train". (emphasis mine)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut that is not correct: The conclusion from this thought experiment is that although the lightening WOULD seem simultaneous to a person standing on the track, it would NOT seem simultaneous to a person on the moving train. The person on the train would see the bolt that struck the front of the train (the bolt the train is moving toward) before the bolt that struck the back of the train (the bolt the train is moving away from). To the person on the platform, however, the two strikes are simultaneous. So the person on the train would conclude that light from the bolt at the front of the train is moving faster than the speed of light, which cannot be true and thus the special theory of relativity.
Hmmm... This ties in nicely with a layman's level thought of mine regarding the effects of environmental stimuli on a child's mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAssigning a higher priority and capacity to our "reactive" mind leads me to believe that early life "programming" *might* generate a hard-wired state where early life abuse produces negative compensatory preferences or behaviors that are all but impossible to alter.
I think you're right that the original thought experiment had the trackside observer seeing the flashes as simultaneous, but what the caption says isn't actually wrong - if the person on the train were to see two simultaneous flashes, then they would not be simultaneous to the person standing on the platform.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEd, we live in the midst of the evidence of the effect of environmental stimuli on children's minds. Culture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe culture of every society differs from cultures of other societies, but is consistent over time, passed on by children absorbing the attitudes and beliefs of the society they grow up in. They absorb most of the beliefs that will guide their future behaviours without conscious thought, and before their brains have developed the capacity for complex reasoning.
Hopefully most children grow up in a positive, supportive environment, but as you point out, some experience abuse. The extent that effects, good or bad, can be described as hardwired depends, I guess, on the intensity of the experience. I would describe the effect of past experiences as influencing, rather than determining behaviour.
A beautifully simple experiment with babies from age 6-10 months (Social evaluation by preverbal infants, Nature 450, 557-559) indicated that babies are born already wired with some positive predispositions. They understand relationships and innately prefer individuals who interact constructively with others. We can assume that these predispositions evolved over millions of years among hunter gatherer ancestors. Those innate predispositions are modified by attitudes that children absorb non-consciously from the society they grow up in, good or bad.
One of my points was that humans in modern societies use the brain in ways that are very different to the ways the brain evolved to be used. The mechanism that evolved to pass on practices that made humans expert hunter gatherers now passes on cultures.
Another point was that Einstein and other subjects of this article used the mechanism that had evolved to preserve past practices, effectively inhibiting innovation for millions of years, to produce new ideas by loading LTM with data that did not exist when the brain evolved, and allowing non-conscious "dream-like" processes to troll through it and produce connections that were not possible through logic.
Thank you for posting this remark. I was trying as hard as I could to figure out why I was so sure the article was incorrect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere are two more:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFriedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz gives two accounts of how he discovered the benzene ring. First he recounted that it came to him in a daydream that he imagined a snake seizing its own tale. Later he stated that it was on a horse drawn bus in London that he had
a vision of dancing atoms.
Paul McCartney, of Beatle fame, is so talented as a songwriter that he "wrote" arguably the most played song of all time in his sleep: "Yesterday". When he awoke he rushed to write it all down, exactly as he remembered it from a dream. But he had doubts he really could have done this. He spent a month inquiring with people in the music business if they had heard this song before, so he wouldn't be acused of plagiarism. Not only is the Beatles' "Yesterday" still played all over the world, it is the song most "covered", or recorded, by other artists. Both MTV and Rolling Stone Magazine have voted it as the #1 pop song of all time. So for Sir Paul, not bad work for a hard day's night.
But, that wouldn't be a case of "daydreaming." Full REM sleep dreaming is a different brain phenomena. Nonetheless, it is still interesting the way the brain works on things in the background.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn a side note, despite being written by Paul only, the song is credited to both Lennon and Mcartney and Yoko Ono refused to change even the order of the credit when Paul asked her to.
Do what I do and block the advert servers. Anything that comes from the main site gets through and the adverts don't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI noticed that too but would not have been able to describe it so well. Thank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the interseting question based on your post would be; are we begining to evolve a larger STM to complement our already large LTM? I personally hope that we are because it will lead to greater innovation and flexibility. If it were to replace the large LTM instead of compliment it then we would become flighty geniuses with no long term rapid response capacity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting but it doesn't sync up with observed facts of mental and personality mutability.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Interseting"? Grammar fail! Should have been "Interesting". What can you expect from a guy that uses the phrase "grammar fail"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is true. Many times, before going to sleep, I was worried about problems I had not solved, but, after a night´s sleep, the correct answers came to my mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI enjoyed this article very much!
These slide shows are VERY INTERSTING. I wish to thank Sciam for posting them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishello!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this... great website! thanks...
It is true. When I wrote, I made a mistake. INTERESTING! Thanks for your correction. Maybe, as a Brazilian whose native language is PORTUGUESE, I wrote thinking about the Portuguese word INTERESSANTE. Very INTERESSANTE!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is SO GOOD to have the chance to post comments IN ENGLISH! Thanks, SCIAM!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi m also daydreamer.i am unfortunately 'cyborg'too.u may be aware of this phenomenon.through body implants certain people have taken control of my mind.my ideas are stolen and i am been put into diadvantageous situation.only my zeal to live have put me alive.if u have idea of cybernatic implant innovated by kelvin warwick,please convey me details of same.i m sure that the implant is at work but i m not knowing how it could be detected.certain people talk with me constantly,i too respond them and get feedback.and this is not a case of psychizophrenia.please find out the science.
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