I'VE GOT IT: Two new studies address what goes on in the mind while one is trying to tease apart a difficult problem.
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Aha! Eureka! Bingo! "By George, I think she's got it!" Everyone knows what it's like to finally figure out a seemingly impossible problem. But what on Earth is happening in the brain while we're driving toward mental pay dirt? Researchers eager to find out have long been on the hunt, knowing that such information could one day provide priceless clues in uncovering and fixing faulty neural systems believed to be behind some mental illnesses and learning disabilities.
Researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London report in the journal PLoS ONE that they monitored action in the brains of 21 volunteers with electroencephalography (EEG) as they tackled verbal problems in an attempt to uncover what goes through the mind—literally—in order to observe what happens in the brain during an "aha!" moment of problem solving.
"This insight is at the core of human intelligence … this is a key cognitive function that the human can boast to have," says Joydeep Bhattacharya, an assistant professor in Goldsmiths's psychology department. "We're interested [in finding out] whether—there is a sudden change that takes place or something that changes gradually [that] we're not consciously aware of," he says. The researchers believed they could pin down brain signals that would enable them to predict whether a person could solve a particular problem or not.
In many cases, the subjects hit a wall, or what researchers refer to as a "mental impasse." If the participants arrived at this point, they could press a button for a clue to help them untangle a problem. Bhattacharya says blocks correlated with strong gamma rhythms (a pattern of brain wave activity associated with selective attention) in the parietal cortex, a region in the upper rear of the brain that has been implicated in integrating information coming from the senses. The research team noticed an interesting phenomenon taking place in the brains of participants given hints: The clues were less likely to help if subjects had an especially high gamma rhythm pattern. The reason, Bhattacharya speculates, is that these participants were, in essence, locked into an inflexible way of thinking and less able to free their minds, and thereby unable to restructure the problem before them.
"If there's excessive attention, it somehow creates mental fixation," he notes. "Your brain is not in a receptive condition."
At the end of each trial, subjects reported whether or not they had a strong "Aha!" moment. Interestingly, researchers found that subjects who were aware that they had found a new way to tackle the problem (and so, had consciously restructured their thinking) were less likely to feel as if they'd had eureka moment compared to more clueless candidates.
"People experience the "Aha!" feeling when they are not consciously monitoring what they are thinking," Bhattacharya says, adding that the sentiment is more of an emotional experience he likens to relief. "If you're applying your conscious brain information processing ability, then you're alpha." (Alpha brain rhythms are associated with a relaxed and open mind; volunteers who unwittingly solved problems showed more robust alpha rhythms than those who knowingly adjusted their thinking to come up with the answer.)
He says the findings indicate that it's better to tackle problems with an open mind than by concentrating too hard on them. In the future, Bhattacharya says, his team will attempt to predict in real-time whether a stumped subject will be able to solve a vexing problem and, also, whether they can manipulate brain rhythms to aid in finding a solution.
The second probe into problem-solving focused on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a region in the front of the brain tied to functions such as decision making, conflict monitoring and reward feedback. A team at the University of Lyon's Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute in Bron, France reports in Neuron that it verified that the ACC helps detect errors during problem solving (as previously discovered), but also that it does so by acting more as a general guide, monitoring and scoring the steps involved in problem solving, pointing out miscalculations as well as success.
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14 Comments
Add CommentYou are struggling with the cogntive issue because you are missing how OUR mind breaks apart new sensory input into some unknown set of variables that get grouped before classification. Where is the formal description of that Group? Binary models have not offered a glimpse. Use a trinary data model and most of your questions become obvious. Eureka
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIntense fear seems to facilitate rapid problem solving. General anxiety seems to interfere with it. Hypervigilance, without thought is more commonly noticed with fear, and conversely with thought, sometimes rational, sometimes not, with anxiety. I suspect that intense fear has to facilitate problem solving, while anxiety, (a malaise of civilized life?) does not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the article, it is about the experiments on the monkeys.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think there are many differences when we are trying to solving the problem.
Our thinking are more abstract and complicated.
It is still a long journey to discover the mysterious truth beneath the meditation.
One way is to find out the parts of the brain involved and to measure brain waves and other markers. Another is to read the countless sages and mystics. Not-knowing and having an empty mind have always considered states from where knowledge arises. I wrote about that in my article Welcome writers Block . But the condition of an empty receptive mind is ever more difficult to obtain it given the fast pace and the information overload.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's a quote in the article that says: "This insight [the "aha!" moment] is at the core of human intelligence … this is a key cognitive function that the human can boast to have."
I'm curious if we are unique in our problem-solving mechanisms. It would be interesting to see a similar experiment performed on animals to see how they solve problems. Or maybe someone can offer some insight on what we already know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfeeling just a good way of detecting the secret of the potential cognitive awareness
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe goal of the experiment is interesting, but I feel that an EEG is to crud to pick up sufficient detail in brain activity. To get a better picture of what is happening, the experiment will need to marry three tools. An fMRI, PET scan and EEG. Blood flows may also provide some useful information, but that study is invasive and therefore more dangerous to do on healthy individuals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting. Marijuana increases open mindedness, and also alpha waves. Does marijuana MAKE you SMARTER?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMarijuana might not make you smarter, but Id say itll definitely help you to get rid of that mental fixation. An idea maybe for all those physicists stuck in their quantum mechanics? But please dont let them use it while working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was thinking that it was prolonged smoke inhalation that causes short term memory loss and not the THC. I'm up for a cup of tea!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I understand the neural networking model correctly, THC physically compels us to think differently by clogging up active synapses with its resistant self. The charge must find another way to go.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey really should give their subjects a big fat bowl, see how well those alpha waves flow.
In the article about brain's problem solving studies, there is no stated distinction mentioned between the meaning of the frequently used word "mind" and the word "brain". Scientists seem to consider mind and brain as one and the same. Anyone observing their own brain activities should be able to recognize that the mind is non-physical while the brain is the grey matter mass that travels around inside the skull but which does not appear to think for itself, without the non-physical guidance of the mind. Scientists rarely acknowledge the presence of energy that they cannot measure and monitor on a sensor. Ironically, the brain does have the capacity to detect the presence of its mind. Just ask yourself!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt least one reader has posted his/her objections to current research trying to get rid of the idea of 'mind'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[b]A couple of suggestions to the 'brain-researchers':[/b]
1) As scientists, they should not try to rid the world of the concept of [i][b]'mind'[/b][/i] till they have properly proven their case that there is actually no such thing. That would be the truly scientific way to go. As a concept, '[i][b]mind[/b][/i]' has been very useful thus far, and it would be foolish to throw it out of our armory of ideas and tools till we know it is useless.
Possibly the brain-researchers are correct; however, at this point of time, they do [b]NOT[/b] have all the evidence they need to dump the '[i][b]mind[/b][/i]' into history's garbage pile of discarded concepts. So we should be thinking instead in terms of [i][b]'brain-mind' complex[/b][/i] till such time as the concept of [i][b]'mind'[/b][/i] is actually proven to be superfluous.
2) Observing increased neuronal activity in the [i][b]anterior cingulate cortex[/b][/i] of rhesus monkeys is probably an interesting experiment for some kinds of science - but it does little (if anything) to aid our understanding of what constitutes [i][b]'thinking'[/b][/i] in even those 'lowly' rhesus monkeys (and definitely it does nothing to aid understanding of human thinking!)
[i][b]Much[/b][/i] more progress would be made by creating experiments that show what actually happens when thinking takes place in human minds. The tools being used by the 'brain-researchers' are clumsy probes indeed to explore something as sophsticated as '[i][b]thinking[/b][/i]'. The kind of probes they are currently using would generally destroy the instrument that does the thinking (the [i][b]'brain-mind complex'[/b][/i]) - and they thus are legally prohibted from exploring the [i][b]human 'brain-mind complex'[/b][/i], which is where they want to go! Well, there are some practical 'mind-exploration tools' available these days that can help in such explorations of the [i][b]human 'brain-mind complex'.[/b][/i]
Those interested may write to me at gs (underscore) chandy (at) yahoo (dot) com and I shall be happy to send them information about these tools (by way of a PowerPoint presentation and a couple of Word documents). If, on looking at that information, they want to explore further I could also enable them to download some useful software that will help them do the modeling that's involved in such [i][b]'living explorations of the brain-mind complex'[/b][/i] as I recommend (i.e. without destroying the brain-mind complex) rather than the sort [i][b]'dessicated research'[/b][/i] described in these utterly inhumane experiments. (The software is available for free).
I would like very much to have posted the above-suggested documentation right here - but the facilities at this SciAm forum do not, alas, permit me to post PowerPoint files! (A most [i][b]'unSciAm'[/b][/i] flaw?)
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Edited by gs_chandy at 05/15/2008 4:21 AM
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Edited by gs_chandy at 05/15/2008 4:28 AM
You could do marijuana to get more creative or you could get into an accident, which I did, and hopefully get more creative. My brain sheared and I feel so creative. When I'm in a group of individuals that are reaching for the same goal I am, I seem to be even more creative. Right now I am thinking about ways a hovercraft might be able to hover without disrupting the air. Which, in turn, makes me think of producing energy from the elements.
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