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The formula for creative thinking is pretty elusive, but scientists have a few evidence-based clues. While the brain’s right hemisphere gets most of the credit for thinking outside the box, evidence shows that a collaborative effort between the right and left hemispheres may bring the best results.
Scientists say that it is the fixed rules of the left hemisphere that keeps a logical check on the broad brainstorming of the right hemisphere. So you wind up with super creative, yet practical, ideas.
In fact, a study published this week in the journal Brain and Cognition shows that when you boost the level of communication between the right and left hemispheres your creativity increases.
Sixty-two subjects performed a creativity task, where they had to come up with as many alternate uses for common objects like, a paper clip, pencil, shoe, etc. as they could in one minute.
After this initial task researchers asked subjects to move their eyes to follow a target as it moved horizontally left to right for 30 seconds. This exercise is thought to increase the cross-talk between the hemispheres.
Then the subjects completed the creative task again. Results were surprising. Subjects came up with significantly more unique uses for the everyday items, than the control group who stared straight ahead.
So when brainstorming ideas for that new Thanksgiving dish or the name of your unborn son, maybe try bilateral eye movement which, in the words of science, increases your inter-hemispheric interaction, and in turn increases your options.
—Christie Nicholson
[Above is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
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21 Comments
Add CommentWhat exactly qualifies as a unique use of an item, I wonder?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery interesting. It seems the body and the brain have "commutative" effects -- e.g. anxiety produces shallow breathing, but shallow breathing alone has been shown to increase anxiety. If changes in eye movement are symptomatic of an ideation event in the individual, then I wonder if the effect we see in this study, starting with the symptom of creative eye movements to generate creativity, is another example of the same "commutativity" between neurology and behavior?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisParticipants who performed the eye movements didn't come up with more uses per se, but the uses they proposed were rated as more original, and they came up with more different categories of use. Crucially the exercise only worked for strong right- or left-handers, not people who were more mixed handed. For a more accurate and complete low-down on this research, check out the coverage at the BPS Research Digest blog: http://bit.ly/1FdGcy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave you ever heard of EMDR? Psychotherapists apply this method to fight against posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResponse to Proto: Uniqueness is characterized by frequency of a participant's specific response in the sample of responses for a given item. For example, if a participant's response to an item, such as brick, is not also given by anyone else (specifically, 0%-5% of other responses) it is given a high uniqueness score. At the other extreme, if a participant's response is given by everyone else, it gets a low uniqueness score. The article provides the specific criteria we used for awarding a range of uniqueness (i.e., originality) points.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you'd like to know the specifics, the link to the article is http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2009.08.017. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Response to nthmost: There is no evidence to date to suggest that when people are engaged in a creative task, they will move their eyes bilaterally. With that said, however, there is some older research that does suggest that people who are engaged in a creative task exhibit more left looking behaviors, and when people are engaged in a verbal task they exhibit more right-looking behaviors. Because attention to space is controlled by the contralateral hemisphere (and that is a gross generalization because the right hemisphere appears able to attend to both left and right space, whereas the left hemisphere just controls right space), the conclusions from looking behavior research has been that direction of gaze is an indication of the more active or aroused hemisphere. In turn, the hemisphere that is activated or aroused by a specific task is domiminant for that task. Keep in mind that there are contradictions in the literature that question the relationship between direction of gaze and hemispheric arousal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI checked out the BPS blog suggested by web-boy. It is quite an excellent accounting of te research that gives a little more detail than is possible in 60 seconds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResponse to bartenbach: Stephen Christman (The University of Toledo) and Ruth Propper (Merrimack) have done some work on the connection between bilateral eye movements, EMDR, and PTSD. Of particular relevance is the following:Christman, S.D., & Propper, R.E. (2008). Interhemispheric interaction and saccadic horizontal eye movements: Implications for episodic memory, EMDR, and PTSD. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, Special issue: Possible EMDR Mechanisms of Action., Vol 2(4), 269-281.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn fact, the work of Christman, Propper, and Keith Lyle was the impetus behind our use of bilateral eye movements. If your interested in bilateral eye movements, look these folks up.
awesome i used bilateral eye movement to come up with a creative comment............
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisawesome i used bilateral eye movement to come with a creative comment............
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://envirogy.wordpress.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do you that? Do we need to stare at a pattern or do we just move our eyes from left to right. Pls teach us the right way. Thanks in advance
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisElizabeth Shobe: Thank you for the response! My comment was skeptical and I didn't actually expect an answer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs an EMDR therapist, I have continuously witnessed the creative, practical, and truthful results that come from the process of using Eye movments to help process trauma or enhance Performance (often of creative people!). I like it so much better than cognitive behavioral therapy, because clients create much better cognitions for themselves after EMDR than I ever could have created for them. More info and a video can be found at SanDiegoTraumaTherapy.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapists have observed this creativity balanced by truth and adaptiveness we might easily call "practicality" on a daily basis. For a brief and simple intro. to EMDR therapy, try SanDiegoTraumaTherapy.com home page with video. For an exhaustive list of research on EMDR for PTSD, Performance and other issues, try emdr.com, or emdria.org which has another listing called Francine Shapiro Library (Click the "Research and Resources" tab to find the Library).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlacebo effect? I'm curious why the control group was not also "active", ie up and down eye mouvements for 30 seconds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe EMDR community would love to see more research about this. We have found in our experience that other gentle forms of (presumably) bilateral stimulatino of the brain can also have a beneficial effect, as can stationary eye movements in combination with alternating auditory stimulation (part of an approach called Brainspotting Protocol by David Grand, PhD.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut as of yet, these variations have not been researched.
I know of a person who's left and right brain hemisphere function almost equally and seems in no time completely dominate the other. Will the interhemispheric interaction experiment help him be more creative?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthere's more to this than meets the eye
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would just like to know how its done. Do you just move the eyes from left to right? Certainly its bilateral eye movement because I have yet to see one who can do it one eye at a time lol.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGudgal625, you are correct, it is moving your line of vision from left to right, right to left. You can use a finger to track this back and forth and there are various devices that flash from left to right and back.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs danaterrell mentioned, other forms of bilateral stimulation also seem to "work" using sound (think stereo) as well as certain yoga or chi-gong movements, which may partly explain their beneficial effect.