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×ÖÄ» We all know it...
×ÖÄ» ..When it happens.
×ÖÄ» The moment when the light seems to go on in your head.
×ÖÄ» The instant when you experience a flash of inspiration.
×ÖÄ» Scientists are beginning to understand
×ÖÄ» how these moments come about.
×ÖÄ» They've devised a series of puzzles...
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×ÖÄ» and brainteasers...
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×ÖÄ» ..To try and unravel how these moments of creativity happen.
×ÖÄ» And now they're able to see inside your brain
×ÖÄ» and witness the creative spark...
×ÖÄ» as it happens.
×ÖÄ» This is incredibly exciting.
×ÖÄ» Now we have the tools and are starting to really uncover
×ÖÄ» what creativity is, what goes on in the brain
×ÖÄ» when people have moments of creativity.
×ÖÄ» And what they're discovering has the power to make you...
×ÖÄ» and every one of us...
×ÖÄ» more creative.
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×ÖÄ» In the early-morning Californian sunshine...
×ÖÄ» ..A team are preparing an experiment.
×ÖÄ» It's been designed by Jonathan Schooler...
×ÖÄ» That is awesome!
×ÖÄ» ..To test how creative you are.
×ÖÄ» And I can see myself.
×ÖÄ» If you look at the advancement of humanity,
×ÖÄ» it fundamentally depends on creative innovation.
×ÖÄ» ..Anyone who has a notion of how it could be done.
×ÖÄ» Yeah. Move three of the quarters...
×ÖÄ» He's fascinated by one part of our creativity.
×ÖÄ» The moment when leaps of imagination, great and small,
×ÖÄ» seem to arrive...
×ÖÄ» ..As if from nowhere.
×ÖÄ» Unintelligible chatter
×ÖÄ» This young guy gets it!
×ÖÄ» Very good.
×ÖÄ» If you just look at all the different major advancements,
×ÖÄ» there's some fundamentally creative insight.
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×ÖÄ» Just look how long it took for people to invent the wheel, right?
×ÖÄ» It's not obvious. Someone obviously had to come up with it.
×ÖÄ» For a mind game, it takes some setting up.
×ÖÄ» A metal pyramid is hoisted to balance perfectly on this.
×ÖÄ» A hundred dollar bill.
×ÖÄ» The question is, how can you remove this hundred dollar bill
×ÖÄ» without causing the pyramid to topple?
×ÖÄ» It's trickier than you might think.
×ÖÄ» You can't just pull it out.
×ÖÄ» You can't grab it from beneath.
×ÖÄ» How to get that hundred dollar bill out.
×ÖÄ» You have nothing to cut with?
×ÖÄ» No, unfortunately not.
×ÖÄ» You can't cut it in half.
×ÖÄ» Maybe you've got it.
×ÖÄ» You need to think outside the box.
×ÖÄ» Think outside the pyramid at this point.
×ÖÄ» But if, like most of us, you need a clue...
×ÖÄ» ..Jonathan's team will shortly bring in something that might help.
×ÖÄ» Laughter
×ÖÄ» In the past decade, there's been a surge of interest
×ÖÄ» in trying to understand how insight works.
×ÖÄ» The moments when... You've got three almost completed triangles.
×ÖÄ» ..Without thinking methodically and logically,
×ÖÄ» we come up with a flash of insight. Ta-da!
×ÖÄ» Congratulations! Look at that. There's three and four.
×ÖÄ» I think insight is a really,
×ÖÄ» really important aspect of creativity.
×ÖÄ» Typically, what an insight involves
×ÖÄ» is overcoming some particular assumption.
×ÖÄ» And so the insight involves suddenly realising,
×ÖÄ» "Oh! There's another way of going about it."
×ÖÄ» Cool. Thanks for doing it.
×ÖÄ» And that is a critical element of the creative process in that regard.
×ÖÄ» This is a goat. OK? It's got legs...
×ÖÄ» Jonathan and his team use a seemingly simple set of puzzles
×ÖÄ» to try and measure this ability.
×ÖÄ» Moving just one of these sticks makes a different goat shape.
×ÖÄ» But which one is it?
×ÖÄ» Ah! Maybe this.
×ÖÄ» You're very close.
×ÖÄ» Did you get it?
×ÖÄ» Ah! A-ha!
×ÖÄ» Ta-da! There it is!
×ÖÄ» It's this one.
×ÖÄ» We do a lot of dull research in psychology, I have to say.
×ÖÄ» But this is one area in psychology where people really enjoy doing it.
×ÖÄ» They just get a thrill out of solving these problems,
×ÖÄ» trying to solve them.
×ÖÄ» And when they get that a-ha! Experience, they just love it.
×ÖÄ» Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
×ÖÄ» The thing about these insight moments is that they're fleeting,
×ÖÄ» elusive and really hard to study.
×ÖÄ» Move three of the quarters and only three
×ÖÄ» to create the same triangle,
×ÖÄ» but facing in a different orientation.
×ÖÄ» Take this one.
×ÖÄ» You have to move three coins to turn the pyramid upside down.
×ÖÄ» But if you were able to do it,
×ÖÄ» Jonathan thinks something very distinct
×ÖÄ» was just happening in your brain.
×ÖÄ» Ah! You got it!
×ÖÄ» All these little puzzles are just one way of trying to understand
×ÖÄ» why and how insight works in our brains.
×ÖÄ» Back at the pyramid, the team are setting up some word clues
×ÖÄ» which may help you figure out how to remove the banknote.
×ÖÄ» They're using this experiment
×ÖÄ» to try and find out if one hemisphere
×ÖÄ» is more heavily involved in generating insight.
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×ÖÄ» The left side of the brain,
×ÖÄ» traditionally associated with logical thinking and language,
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×ÖÄ» or the right side,
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×ÖÄ» often linked to spatial awareness and intuition.
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×ÖÄ» We took advantage of a fact,
×ÖÄ» which is that if you flash information
×ÖÄ» to the right visual field,
×ÖÄ» it goes initially to the left hemisphere,
×ÖÄ» and if you flash information to the left visual field,
×ÖÄ» it goes initially to the right hemisphere.
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×ÖÄ» The word clues on the right side of the screen
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×ÖÄ» are primarily interpreted by the left side of your brain.
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×ÖÄ» The words on the left by the right hemisphere of the brain.
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×ÖÄ» Do you see anything that helps?
×ÖÄ» Perhaps not.
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×ÖÄ» Well, how about now?
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×ÖÄ» Can you burn it? Yep. That is the correct answer.
×ÖÄ» So the answer is you light the bill on fire
×ÖÄ» and it'll burn down and it's gone.
×ÖÄ» The insight is...
×ÖÄ» that you don't have to take it out whole.
×ÖÄ» But what's so revealing is that it really does matter
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×ÖÄ» which side the clue, burn, is played to.
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×ÖÄ» What we found, remarkably,
×ÖÄ» is that the right hemisphere was actually more sensitive
×ÖÄ» to the hints than the left hemisphere.
×ÖÄ» So when we presented information to the left visual field,
×ÖÄ» people were more likely to solve the problem.
×ÖÄ» Jonathan's found that the right side of the brain
×ÖÄ» is more likely than the left to make that connection
×ÖÄ» that leads to a sudden flash of insight.
×ÖÄ» Puzzles have become a rather important way
×ÖÄ» of starting to understand how insight happens.
×ÖÄ» But for scientists, it's just the beginning
×ÖÄ» of a much more ambitious attempt
×ÖÄ» to understand all the different mental processes
×ÖÄ» that together help to make us creative.
×ÖÄ» How they work in our brains.
×ÖÄ» Because if we could understand them,
×ÖÄ» we might all become a bit more creative.
×ÖÄ» The ability to think in novel and useful ways
×ÖÄ» has been one of the defining features of the human species.
×ÖÄ» I think creativity has been essential to the success of humans.
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×ÖÄ» It helped us to fly to the moon,
×ÖÄ» to cure illnesses,
×Ö to develop microprocessors
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Ä» I think you can see it everywhere.
×ÖÄ» Until recently,
×Ö research into creativity has focused on
Ä» what could be seen from the outside,
×ÖÄ» observing human behaviour and psychology.
×ÖÄ» Now, the tools of neuroscience allow us
×ÖÄ» to look inside the brain,
×ÖÄ» to try and capture inspiration as it strikes.
×ÖÄ» Mark Beeman is one of the pioneers of this new science.
×Ö He's setting out to try and discover
Ä» the neural correlate of creativity.
×Ö That's the bit of your brain
Ä» that corresponds to these creative moments of insight.
×ÖÄ» The difficulty of solving insight in the lab is
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×ÖÄ» we can't just take the next Archimedes or the next Einstein
×ÖÄ» and stick her in a brain scanner
×ÖÄ» and wait for her to have a great "Aha" Moment.
×ÖÄ» Even if she was willing we would need more than one "Aha"
×ÖÄ» moment or eureka moment to study,
×ÖÄ» because a lot of things are going on in the brain all the time.
×ÖÄ» So he's come up with a systematic way to induce lots of insights.
×ÖÄ» Take a look at these three words.
×ÖÄ» What word goes with - pine, crab, and sauce?
×ÖÄ» Can you figure out what connects them?
×ÖÄ» How are you trying to solve this problem?
×ÖÄ» Are you testing out one word after another?
×Ö That's the analytical way.
Ä» ×ÖÄ» But you might also suddenly "Get it" in a flash of insight.
×ÖÄ» Pine, crab, sauce.
×ÖÄ» Did you get it?
×ÖÄ» It's apple.
×Ö But more importantly,
Ä» did you get there by methodical, logical thinking?
×ÖÄ» Or did lightning strike?
×ÖÄ» Hi, Laura. Thanks for coming in today, I'm Dasha.
×ÖÄ» We'll be doing the EEG setup now.
×ÖÄ» If you can just move your hair back.
×Ö In his lab, just outside Chicago,
Ä» ×ÖÄ» Mark's team are getting ready to try and capture these insight moments.
×ÖÄ» For two millennia, since Archimedes shouted "Eureka,"
×ÖÄ» people have believed that there's some kind of different procssing
×ÖÄ» that allows them to sometimes have these novel ideas.
×ÖÄ» But because it feels different doesn't necessarily mean
×ÖÄ» that there's different brain activity,
×ÖÄ» there's been arguments about that.
×Ö Mark's PhD student, Dasha,
Ä» places an electroencephalogram,
×ÖÄ» or EEG cap, on a volunteer.
×ÖÄ» This will measure her brain activity as she solves the problems.
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×ÖÄ» Fire. Correct. Insight.
×Ö We're examining Laura's brainwaves
Ä» as she's trying to solve problems and then she tells us
×ÖÄ» whether she solves the problem analytically or by insight.
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×ÖÄ» Sun. Yes, that's correct.
×ÖÄ» So we're relying on her to be able to tell us
×ÖÄ» how she's solving the problem.
×ÖÄ» Analysis.
×ÖÄ» He records data from every one of these fleeting insight moments
×ÖÄ» using two very different scientific tools.
×ÖÄ» FMRI is very good at picking up where in the brain
×ÖÄ» something's happening,
×ÖÄ» and EEG is very good at telling us when it happens.
×ÖÄ» Can. Correct. Analysis.
×ÖÄ» He's now analysed hundreds of hours of brainwaves.
×ÖÄ» And what that shows is that we really are thinking differently
×ÖÄ» when we have a creative moment.
×ÖÄ» Writer. Correct. Insight.
×ÖÄ» There are differences when people tell us
×Ö they solved it by insight versus
Ä» when they tell us they solved analytically -
×Ö they are doing different things,
Ä» behaving in different ways,
×Ö having different ideas in their mind,
Ä» different parts of their brain active,
×ÖÄ» both at the moment that they solve it and leading up to that moment.
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×ÖÄ» In a sense, he's found the creative spark.
×ÖÄ» Not just how it happens, but where it happens.
×ÖÄ» The part of your brain where these moments occur.
×Ö It happens here -
Ä» the anterior superior temporal gyrus.
×ÖÄ» We have one on either side.
×ÖÄ» During a flash of insight, the left doesn't really react.
×ÖÄ» But the right side does.
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×ÖÄ» Insight.
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×ÖÄ» A striking increase in high energy brainwaves,
×ÖÄ» called gamma waves, erupts from this one spot.
×ÖÄ» The brain's two halves may look like a mirror image.
×ÖÄ» Yet this aspect of creativity,
×ÖÄ» insight, does seem to happen in the right hemisphere.
×ÖÄ» That's because there is a subtle,
×ÖÄ» but very real structural difference.
×ÖÄ» So it turns out neurons actually do differ on the left
×Ö and right hemisphere,
Ä» very subtly in the ways that they're wired.
×ÖÄ» The dendrites, the pieces of neurons that collect information,
×ÖÄ» actually branch differently in,
×ÖÄ» at least some neurons, on the left and right side,
×ÖÄ» characteristically having broader branching on the right hemisphere,
×Ö so that each neuron is collecting information
Ä» from a broader source of input,
×ÖÄ» and this allows them to find connections
×ÖÄ» that might not be evident otherwise.
×ÖÄ» Brain cells on the left have short dendrites,
×ÖÄ» useful for pulling in information from nearby.
×ÖÄ» But the cells on the right branch out much further
×ÖÄ» and pull together distant, unrelated ideas.
×ÖÄ» So it's here that novel connections between concepts
×ÖÄ» can get made in a flash of insight.
×ÖÄ» It's not just that these moments of creative insight
×ÖÄ» feel subjectively different.
×ÖÄ» They are objectively different in your brain.
×ÖÄ» The moment of insight feels instantaneous.
×ÖÄ» John Kounios has discovered it's anything but.
×ÖÄ» He's interested in understanding the sequence of brainwaves
×ÖÄ» that precedes an insight.
×ÖÄ» He's looking at what's happening before the gamma wave spike
×ÖÄ» that marks the moment when an insight pops into your awareness.
×ÖÄ» So at the "Aha" Moment
×ÖÄ» there's a burst in the right temporal lobe,
×ÖÄ» just about above the right ear.
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×ÖÄ» If you go about half a second before that,
×ÖÄ» or more like a second before that,
×ÖÄ» there's a burst of alpha waves in the back of the head
×ÖÄ» on the right side.
×Ö Now strangely enough,
Ä» ×ÖÄ» the back of the brain accomplishes visual processing.
×ÖÄ» And alpha is known to reflect brain areas shutting down.
×ÖÄ» The effect of this preceding burst of alpha waves
×ÖÄ» seem to be to shut down parts of your visual cortex.
×ÖÄ» You have all of this visual information flooding in.
×ÖÄ» Your brain momentarily
×ÖÄ» shuts down some of that visual information.
×ÖÄ» It is sort of like closing your eyes,
×ÖÄ» but in our experiments some are not allowed to close their eyes,
×Ö so the brain does its own blinking,
Ä» and that allows this very faint idea
×ÖÄ» to bubble up to the surface as an insight.
×Ö An insight begins with an idea
Ä» rumbling around your unconscious mind.
×Ö And the effect of these alpha waves
Ä» is to cut off distractions,
×Ö helping you summon that new idea
Ä» into awareness.
×ÖÄ» Think of it this way,
×ÖÄ» when you ask somebody a difficult question you often notice
×ÖÄ» they will look away or they might even close their eyes or look down.
×Ö They'll look anywhere but at a face,
Ä» which is very distracting.
×ÖÄ» If your attention is directed inwardly,
×Ö then you're more likely to solve the problem
Ä» with a flash of insight.
×ÖÄ» So if you want to have more insights,
×ÖÄ» perhaps cutting off the distractions of the outside world
×Ö just for a short time
Ä» could help increase your creativity.
×ÖÄ» 2,000 years after Archimedes shouted eureka in the bath,
×ÖÄ» we now know that insights don't in fact come from nowhere.
×ÖÄ» They unfold through a chain of events in your brain.
×Ö It begins with a problem,
Ä» one that logic can't solve.
×Ö Yet, in your unconscious mind,
Ä» an insight is stirring.
×Ö Suddenly.
Ä» A blast of alpha waves.
×ÖÄ» Your brain blinks.
×ÖÄ» Seconds later, a burst of gamma waves.
×ÖÄ» And this is what you experience as the moment of insight.
×ÖÄ» But insight on its own is just one of the mental processes
×ÖÄ» that make up creativity.
×ÖÄ» Scientists are also turning their attention
×ÖÄ» to a different aspect of creative thinking.
×ÖÄ» A study that has its roots
×ÖÄ» in the turmoil of the Second World War.
×Ö At the height of the conflict,
Ä» ×ÖÄ» tens of thousands of US planes were in the skies.
×ÖÄ» With enemy fire, breakdowns and accidents rife,
×ÖÄ» surviving as a pilot took a special kind of skill.
×ÖÄ» One that caught the attention of JP Guildford,
×ÖÄ» a psychologist working with the air force.
×Ö He noticed that in an emergency,
Ä» some aircrew had the ability to "Think outside the box"
×ÖÄ» to come up with novel,
×ÖÄ» creative insights that saved their lives.
×ÖÄ» Guilford was among the first to believe
×ÖÄ» that intelligence alone had been overrated.
×ÖÄ» And that what he was studying in the airmen was undervalued.
×ÖÄ» He called this talent divergent thinking.
×ÖÄ» A form of creativity.
×ÖÄ» And he came up with a way to test it,
×ÖÄ» one that is still in use today.
×ÖÄ» Venice Beach, California.
×ÖÄ» It's a hangout of the curious, the creative and the eccentric.
×ÖÄ» Today Professor Rex Jung is here to test just how creative they are.
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×ÖÄ» And here it is.
×ÖÄ» This is the tool of creativity that we are going to use today.
×ÖÄ» It's a brick, a common brick.
×ÖÄ» It's known as the divergent thinking test.
×ÖÄ» Sir, do you want to take a test of creativity?
×ÖÄ» Of diverging from known ideas to come up with something novel.
×ÖÄ» So you take a common object like a brick,
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×ÖÄ» and you ask people to think of as many creative ways
×ÖÄ» they can think of to use this thing.
×ÖÄ» Sir, a creativity test? You look like you're ready to go.
×ÖÄ» Come on. Name's Coleman. David.
×ÖÄ» Caveman. Caveman? Yeah.
×ÖÄ» So come on over here...
×ÖÄ» It's simple, but powerful,
×ÖÄ» one of the most commonly used creativity tests.
×ÖÄ» ..My bag of tricks.
×ÖÄ» I'm going to give you a minute to tell me
×Ö as many new and useful creative uses for this brick
Ä» ×ÖÄ» that you can think of in the next minute. Go.
×ÖÄ» Hammer. Building doorstop. A paperweight.
×ÖÄ» A brick wall. Protection.
×ÖÄ» Art! Er...
×ÖÄ» Each idea is given a score.
×ÖÄ» From one, for the mundane or obvious...
×ÖÄ» A building block. A dam.
×ÖÄ» Making a castle.
×ÖÄ» ..To five for the most imaginative.
×ÖÄ» - Excellent. - Making a really heavy shoe.
×ÖÄ» To make a humungous hole.
×ÖÄ» The more highly inventive new ideas you come up with,
×ÖÄ» the more of a divergent thinker you are.
×ÖÄ» - Thank you very much. - Great. Thanks for your time.
×ÖÄ» He howls like an animal
×ÖÄ» Measuring creativity for scientific research
×Ö now involves a series of different tests,
Ä» and Rex has devised his own broad measure of creativity.
×ÖÄ» He's been able to see how it compares to IQ,
×ÖÄ» the traditional measure of intelligence.
×ÖÄ» One of the things that got me interested in studying creativity
×Ö was it doesn't appear that
Ä» intelligence and creativity are isomorphic,
×ÖÄ» are the same thing,
×ÖÄ» it appears that there's overlap between the two,
×ÖÄ» but that they're somewhat different constructs from each other.
×ÖÄ» There's something very different
×Ö that is going on in the brain of people
Ä» who are creative as opposed to people
×ÖÄ» who are acting intelligent.
×ÖÄ» So creativity and intelligence seem to be different processes
×ÖÄ» on the outside.
×ÖÄ» Rex is one of the first scientists to look inside,
×ÖÄ» and examine the structure of the brain,
×ÖÄ» to see what makes people highly creative.
×Ö For some time,
Ä» scientists have understood the basic neural mechanisms of intelligence.
×ÖÄ» It's about the fast and efficient firing of neurons
×ÖÄ» in the grey matter.
×ÖÄ» The mystery is what's happening
×ÖÄ» when you come up with creative ideas?
×ÖÄ» And here's where Rex started to find differences.
×ÖÄ» This beautiful image is of the white matter of your brain.
×ÖÄ» So this is the most sophisticated image we have,
×ÖÄ» this is an image of the white matter fibre tracts.
×ÖÄ» Looks like a big spaghetti ball,
×ÖÄ» but it actually makes a little bit of sense.
×Ö Each of us has 150,000 kilometres
Ä» of these connections.
×ÖÄ» It's an intricate wiring system
×ÖÄ» that connects regions of your brain.
×Ö So these are the actual roadways
Ä» going in different regions of the brain,
×ÖÄ» connecting up different neural networks.
×ÖÄ» His studies showed that there was indeed
×ÖÄ» a difference in the brain structure of highly creative people.
×ÖÄ» It's about the white matter.
×ÖÄ» What we learned was somewhat surprising,
×Ö in that unlike intelligence,
Ä» where more is invariably better,
×ÖÄ» more tissue, more white matter connectivity, more biochemistry.
×ÖÄ» In creativity the picture was the opposite of
×Ö what we predicted,
Ä» ×ÖÄ» where less is better in terms of higher creative capacity.
×ÖÄ» But why should less white matter mean more creativity?
×ÖÄ» It seems that because certain areas of the brain are less packed,
×ÖÄ» less organised, that nerve traffic is slowed down.
×ÖÄ» So instead of having this very efficient pathway going from A to B,
×ÖÄ» you have lots of different directions,
×ÖÄ» lots of different pathways that ideas can,
×Ö can flow, and in this idea space,
Ä» ×ÖÄ» it's more likely for new ones to collide with each other
×ÖÄ» and be brought into conscious awareness.
×Ö This cognitive slowdown,
Ä» which makes it more likely for ideas to connect with each other,
×ÖÄ» seems to be an important part of the mechanism
×ÖÄ» that underlies divergent thinking.
×ÖÄ» Rex believes he has started to see the difference
×ÖÄ» between what's going on inside us
×ÖÄ» when we display our intelligence and our creativity.
×ÖÄ» And it's all, in a sense, about speed.
×ÖÄ» Intellectual functioning,
×ÖÄ» the research is showing that the information is travelling
×Ö the shortest pathway,
Ä» the quickest pathway that it can get,
×ÖÄ» from point A to B.
×ÖÄ» This is very important that you can have a fast and short pathway,
×ÖÄ» to get from point A to point B.
×ÖÄ» But creativity is different.
×ÖÄ» It's not about speed and efficiency.
×ÖÄ» Creativity is slow, and meandering.
×ÖÄ» These winding roads,
×ÖÄ» I think, are analogous to the pathways in the brain
×ÖÄ» that are coming together less frequently,
×ÖÄ» so you don't know quite where they're going to end up,
×ÖÄ» but it could end up some place very interesting.
×ÖÄ» But this is certainly a less travelled road than the...
×ÖÄ» than the highway that we were on,
×Ö it's a slower, more meandering pathway
Ä» and I think that's how it works in the brain.
×ÖÄ» It would be wrong to think that brain structure alone
×ÖÄ» made you creative.
×ÖÄ» But Rex's work shows - for the first time -
×Ö that there is a neurological basis to divergent thinking,
Ä» to creativity itself.
×ÖÄ» The city of Baltimore.
×ÖÄ» Here, another aspect of creativity
×ÖÄ» is emerging for science to study.
×Ö It's just always been a deep obsession of mine.
Ä» I dream about it,
×ÖÄ» I wake up thinking about it, I go to bed thinking about it.
×ÖÄ» I always wonder how is it that sound can produce beauty.
×ÖÄ» Thank you.
×ÖÄ» Charles Limb has the night off work.
×ÖÄ» He'll be spending tonight the same way he spends all his spare time.
×ÖÄ» Listening to music.
×ÖÄ» I think that jazz is probably one of the most creative art forms
×ÖÄ» in all existence, in all forms of music.
×ÖÄ» From the perspective of creation of new ideas,
×ÖÄ» it doesn't get much better than jazz.
×ÖÄ» Charles is fascinated by the way ideas flow so fast
×ÖÄ» when jazz musicians improvise.
×ÖÄ» This piece of music will never be played the same way again.
×Ö From a basic melody,
Ä» they're creating something new,
×ÖÄ» making it up on the spot.
×ÖÄ» What they are doing is a real talent.
×ÖÄ» But it is, in a sense, something we all have.
×ÖÄ» That's exactly what Charles is researching,
×ÖÄ» here at John's Hopkins hospital in Baltimore.
×Ö One of the intriguing things about creativity
Ä» ×ÖÄ» is that it exists in everybody in both high and low levels,
×Ö so maybe somebody's not used to thinking of themselves as an artist,
Ä» yet if they think about their daily behaviour,
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×ÖÄ» most of it is unscripted, most of it is improvised,
×ÖÄ» they don't actually plan every second what they are going to do.
×ÖÄ» So to really understand how we improvise,
×ÖÄ» Charles is studying the best musicians he knows.
×Ö - Charles. - Mike, hi, how are you?
Ä» Good. Thanks for coming in.
×ÖÄ» And that's why Mike Pope has come into the lab.
×ÖÄ» We're going to be doing a functional MRI of your brain
×ÖÄ» while we're improvising, and while we're...
×ÖÄ» Charles's plan is to use FMRI to image
×ÖÄ» what's happening in his brain as he improvises.
×Ö - So here we are. - So this is it?
Ä» So this is the scanner room,
×ÖÄ» where we're going to be doing your brain scanning.
×ÖÄ» We've got his plastic piano.
×ÖÄ» You're going to be able to play this in the scanner.
×ÖÄ» This is the thing you spent all the time working on?
×Ö Two years to make it work.
Ä» Why don't we get you situated then?
×ÖÄ» All right. Sounds good.
×Ö Creativity is probably
Ä» the combination of ordinary mental processes
Ä» ×ÖÄ» combined in ways that we hadn't described before,
×ÖÄ» that somehow allow us to gain new insights and to generate new ideas.
×ÖÄ» I think that's creativity in a nutshell.
×ÖÄ» - Can you see your hands? - Yeah, sure can.
×ÖÄ» Am I allowed to turn a little bit, like that?
×ÖÄ» Uh-huh. Yeah. Go ahead.
×ÖÄ» For Charles, it's a chance to explore the secrets
×ÖÄ» of one of his jazz heroes.
×ÖÄ» I really hope that we can gain some incredible insights
×ÖÄ» in how the brain innovates.
×Ö But on the other hand,
Ä» as far as my own personal joy in a science experiment,
×ÖÄ» I don't think I can do anything more enjoyable in science ever,
×ÖÄ» for the rest of my life.
×ÖÄ» It's really bizarre!
×ÖÄ» The computer plays a recorded melody.
×ÖÄ» Then Mike starts to improvise.
×ÖÄ» Charles plays too, to make Mike feel a bit more at home.
×ÖÄ» I hope I can keep up with him,
×ÖÄ» he's really pretty, pretty special.
×ÖÄ» But Mike's improvising is just too fast.
×ÖÄ» He laughs
×ÖÄ» The result of this experiment have been really exciting.
×ÖÄ» We saw changes in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain,
×ÖÄ» that's the frontal lobes of the brain,
×ÖÄ» that's the portion of the brain that kind of makes us human.
×ÖÄ» One of the main roles of this large area at the front of the brain
×ÖÄ» is in conscious self-monitoring.
×ÖÄ» Watching what you do and what you say.
×ÖÄ» Jazz musicians, I think,
×ÖÄ» naturally have to take a risk musically
×ÖÄ» and to promote that ability to take risks,
×ÖÄ» have to turn off a little bit of the gatekeeper.
×Ö And so we saw the shutdown of the pre-frontal cortex
Ä» in these musicians.
×ÖÄ» Kind of the opposite of what you would do at a cocktail party
×ÖÄ» when you are very focused on saying
×ÖÄ» the right thing or making sure you don't say something silly.
×ÖÄ» Charles is now widening his research
×ÖÄ» to study other kinds of improvisers.
×ÖÄ» We've actually recently looked at freestyle rap,
×ÖÄ» and we've looked at illustrators, cartoonists.
×Ö And we're seeing that the pre-frontal cortex in both of these settings
Ä» seems to decrease in some component,
×Ö when you switch from a memorised,
Ä» or a non-creative component,
×ÖÄ» to a generative, improvised component.
×ÖÄ» It's all part of Charles' grand ambition.
×ÖÄ» He's out to discover
×ÖÄ» whether there is a deep creative potential that lies within us all.
×Ö These art forms are different,
Ä» yet they share a basic process in the brain,
×ÖÄ» and so I have in my mind, long-term,
×ÖÄ» this idea that if you were able to define these circuits,
×ÖÄ» we might be able to enhance them in many ways,
×Ö that in the end,
Ä» humans might be better at being creative.
×ÖÄ» I think obviously this is the kind of work
×ÖÄ» that will take many lifetimes to really consolidate,
×Ö but I'm just glad to even start some of these experiments,
Ä» to try to answer these questions.
×ÖÄ» Research that began with mind games and brain teasers
×Ö has started to unlock some of the secrets of
Ä» what makes you creative.
×ÖÄ» The connected - but different - processes of insight.
×ÖÄ» Divergent thinking.
×ÖÄ» And improvising.
×ÖÄ» But crucially they have revealed
×Ö there is indeed a neural correlate of creativity,
Ä» a signature of creativity in your brain.
×ÖÄ» And now we're discovering
×ÖÄ» that this research could be rather helpful to all of us.
×ÖÄ» She squeals with delight
×ÖÄ» In the skies above Holland,
×ÖÄ» Simone Ritter is experiencing something new.
×ÖÄ» Until today, she had never set foot in a glider.
×ÖÄ» What she's doing forms the backbone of her research
×ÖÄ» to make all of us more creative.
×ÖÄ» Simone has a theory...
×ÖÄ» Well, this virtual reality lab.
×ÖÄ» The most important equipment is this backpack here.
×ÖÄ» OK, so, if you could wear it...
×ÖÄ» She believes that new and unexpected experiences
×ÖÄ» can boost your creativity.
×ÖÄ» So she's devised an experiment
×ÖÄ» that is designed to alter your cognitive habits.
×ÖÄ» So maybe you already recognise where you are?
×ÖÄ» I'm in the cafeteria.
×ÖÄ» Yeah, right. Erm, and what you will do is,
×ÖÄ» you will first walk around a little bit,
×ÖÄ» just to get used to the equipment.
×ÖÄ» Just walk around, you have a lot of space.
×ÖÄ» The location looks familiar.
×ÖÄ» But Annika has stepped into a virtual world
×ÖÄ» that cannot exist in reality.
×ÖÄ» One designed to startle, and shake her up.
×Ö OK. And now you see a table on the left side,
Ä» do you?
×ÖÄ» Yeah, with a suitcase.
×ÖÄ» - Yeah. - Could you please walk towards the table
×ÖÄ» - and towards the suitcase? - OK.
???
×ÖÄ» She mutters
×ÖÄ» She gasps and laughs
×ÖÄ» OK. It gets smaller.
×ÖÄ» In this virtual world the laws of physics are subverted.
×ÖÄ» The suitcase grows smaller as she approaches it.
×ÖÄ» The bottle flies upwards, defying gravity.
×ÖÄ» After three minutes... I'm here.
×ÖÄ» ..She's completely disorientated. There's a pole.
×ÖÄ» It's great. It's funny,
×ÖÄ» but it's also an experience that opens up your mind.
×ÖÄ» And that's what we, what we want.
×ÖÄ» Welcome back to the real world.???
×ÖÄ» Simone's aim is to disrupt
×ÖÄ» what she calls our functional fixedness.
×ÖÄ» That's a mental block, where your thinking gets stuck in rut.
×ÖÄ» If you experience something unexpected,
×ÖÄ» this will also influence your cognitive patterns -
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×ÖÄ» you would break old cognitive patterns,
×ÖÄ» you would overcome functional fixedness,
×ÖÄ» and this will help you to make new associations between concepts.
2¿Õ°×Ê±¼äÖá
×ÖÄ» But is she right?
×ÖÄ» Annika, like the other participants in Simone's study,
×ÖÄ» takes an online version of the divergent thinking brick test.
×Ö And what she's discovered is that
Ä» experiencing this strange new virtual world
×ÖÄ» has a very real effect.
×Ö The results showed an increase of ten to 15 percent
Ä» in creativity scores.
×ÖÄ» The first lesson is that unexpected
×ÖÄ» and unusual experiences
×ÖÄ» help you to think more flexible and creative.
×ÖÄ» And that this is one way to help you to think different,
×ÖÄ» to approach problems in a different way.
×ÖÄ» And I would advise people to look for unexpected experiences.
×ÖÄ» But most of us don't have virtual reality suites at home.
×ÖÄ» How could this apply to our everyday lives?
×Ö Simone has devised something new,
Ä» something far more commonplace,
×ÖÄ» that we can use to increase our creativity.
×ÖÄ» This is the real university canteen.
×ÖÄ» Here the day begins like any other.
×ÖÄ» Starting with a classic Dutch breakfast -
×ÖÄ» the chocolate chip sandwich.
×ÖÄ» We all know how to make a sandwich.
×ÖÄ» But what's about to happen here is
×ÖÄ» what Simone calls "Schema violation".
×ÖÄ» A disruption of a normal pattern of thought or behaviour.
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×ÖÄ» The computer gives step-by-step instructions.
???
×ÖÄ» The volunteer, Thomas, follows each prompt.
???
×ÖÄ» Then, he's prompted to do something differently.
×ÖÄ» Yeah, as you can see he was really surprised,
×ÖÄ» because now he has to put the chocolate chips on the disc.
×ÖÄ» That's not the way they normally do it,
×ÖÄ» they first put the butter on the bread.
×ÖÄ» The resulting sandwich is pretty standard.
×ÖÄ» But he got there by a different, unexpected route.
×ÖÄ» This sort of activity also boosts your creativity test scores
×ÖÄ» by up to 15 percent.
×ÖÄ» Just performing such an activity where you see OK,
×ÖÄ» it doesn't have to be like I assume it to be,
×ÖÄ» but it can also be done differently,
×ÖÄ» in a new way, in a different way.
×Ö Also it enables you think different,
Ä» to break cognitive patterns,
×Ö to overcome functional fixedness,
Ä» ×ÖÄ» and this helps you to make new associations between concepts,
×ÖÄ» which is really important for creativity.
×ÖÄ» Thankfully it doesn't have to be a chocolate chip sandwich.
×ÖÄ» It's about disrupting any routine.
×Ö We don't need virtual reality,
Ä» where we manipulate the laws of physics,
×Ö it can be as simple as that,
Ä» don't prepare a sandwich in the normal order
×Ö but just switch one of the steps,
Ä» ×ÖÄ» and this will make you more flexible
×ÖÄ» - this will help you to think creative.
×ÖÄ» So give yourself room for creativity.
???
×ÖÄ» The effect of changing your routines changes your brain.
???
×ÖÄ» Well-travelled neural pathways are abandoned,
×ÖÄ» forcing new connections to be made between brain cells.
×ÖÄ» And that means more new and original ideas.
×ÖÄ» I'm back on the ground.
×ÖÄ» It's late afternoon at Stearn's wharf.
×ÖÄ» Jonathan Schooler and his team have one last experiment to run.
×ÖÄ» One which may help explain one of the most enigmatic
×ÖÄ» mysteries about creativity.
×Ö Why you have your best ideas
Ä» when you are least expecting them.
×ÖÄ» It all begins with a familiar test of divergent thinking -
×Ö the brick test.
Ä» You can start by having a seat.
×ÖÄ» We're going to do a test of your creativity.
×ÖÄ» OK, so there's going to be a couple of different phases
×Ö to this experiment today.
Ä» You're going to have two minutes to generates
×Ö as many uses as possible for this brick
Ä» that you can think of,
×ÖÄ» and you can be as creative as you like.
×ÖÄ» I could write a note around it,
×ÖÄ» and put it through somebody's window.
×ÖÄ» I could hit somebody over the head with it.
×ÖÄ» Use the pattern as a stamp.
×ÖÄ» I could use it, like,
×ÖÄ» to hold some papers down, like a paperweight.
×ÖÄ» Now they take a two minute break.
×ÖÄ» Each person is asked to spend it a different way.
×Ö The first volunteer is told just to sit
Ä» and do nothing.
×ÖÄ» The second person is given a non-demanding task.
×ÖÄ» Arrange the blocks by colour.
×ÖÄ» Start with one colour, and just sort them into piles.
×ÖÄ» The third person is given a very demanding task.
×ÖÄ» Build a little model.
×ÖÄ» I want you to used these Legos to actually build a house.
×Ö The volunteers don't know it,
Ä» but these two minutes
×ÖÄ» are actually the most important part of the experiment.
×ÖÄ» This is when their minds
×ÖÄ» are either given a chance to wander, or not.
×ÖÄ» Would it be a bad thing if I fell asleep right now?
×ÖÄ» We'd like you to remain awake.
×ÖÄ» After the break, they take the divergent thinking test again.
×ÖÄ» Has their creativity changed?
×ÖÄ» We're going to return back to this brick test,
×ÖÄ» and we're going to see again in two minutes' time,
×ÖÄ» how many uses you can come with, but new uses,
×ÖÄ» ones that you haven't said originally.
×ÖÄ» Er, use it to, erm...
×ÖÄ» It turns out that people occupied with the demanding task
×ÖÄ» do the worst on the second creativity test.
×ÖÄ» But what is surprising is who comes first.
×ÖÄ» Not those left staring into space, doing nothing.
×ÖÄ» But the people given a mindless, easy task.
×ÖÄ» I could break it into pieces,
×ÖÄ» and paint different things on each one,
×ÖÄ» like flowers, or whatever, and sell them.
×ÖÄ» I could cut it into four pieces,
×ÖÄ» and put it under the legs of the bed
×ÖÄ» to make the bed a little bit higher.
×ÖÄ» Mind wandering seems to particularly facilitate the creative process.
×Ö Now one interesting thing is,
Ä» you might think that just giving nothing to do
×ÖÄ» would have also created similar mind wandering benefits,
×ÖÄ» but it seems that not all mind wandering is equal.
×Ö That mind wandering
Ä» that's broken up by engaging in a non-demanding task
×Ö seems to be more functional
Ä» than the mind wandering that happens
×ÖÄ» when you're given absolutely nothing to do.
×ÖÄ» So if you want to come up with a creative solution to a problem,
×ÖÄ» don't just do nothing.
×ÖÄ» Do something undemanding instead.
×ÖÄ» We don't know exactly why that is,
×ÖÄ» but one reasonable possibility is by breaking it up,
×ÖÄ» by sort of thinking a little bit about the task
×ÖÄ» and coming back and thinking a little bit, and coming back,
×Ö sort of stirs the pot
Ä» and allows a special kind of unconscious recombination
×ÖÄ» that's particularly beneficial for creativity.
×ÖÄ» You now have a good excuse to get up from your desk
×ÖÄ» and walk away from the problem.
×ÖÄ» Well, one important lesson
×ÖÄ» is that if you're stumped, take a break
×Ö and allow the unconscious processes
Ä» to take a hold.
×ÖÄ» But it also suggests
×ÖÄ» the kind of break that you might want to take.
×Ö Rather than just sitting there,
Ä» you might want to take a walk,
×ÖÄ» or take or shower, or do something - gardening.
×ÖÄ» Something that's not especially demanding
×ÖÄ» but still sort of occupies your mind a little bit,
×ÖÄ» and yet nevertheless enables the mind to wander.
×ÖÄ» The research does underline the notion
×ÖÄ» that if you want to be more creative,
×ÖÄ» it is best not to be too focused.
×ÖÄ» At least, not all the time.
×ÖÄ» Mind wandering has a long history in creativity.
×ÖÄ» But now we're starting to understand just why it's so effective.
×ÖÄ» This is a question that Rex Jung has been able to try
×ÖÄ» and answer in the last few years.
×Ö Beethoven liked to take a long walk
Ä» when he was thinking about music,
×ÖÄ» I like to mow the lawn, this repetitive action
???
×Ö that you're going back and forth,
Ä» and doing some physical activity,
×ÖÄ» occupying your body but your mind can wonder freely.
×ÖÄ» He studied brain scan after brain scan,
×ÖÄ» of people as their minds wandered.
×ÖÄ» He noticed a distinct change in one area of the brain.
×ÖÄ» It's called the frontal lobe, right above your eyes.
×ÖÄ» What he observed was something he calls transient hypofrontality,
×ÖÄ» a kind of temporary sleep mode.
×ÖÄ» Where the frontal lobes are slightly pulled back,
×ÖÄ» the brakes are slightly pulled back off the system
×ÖÄ» and ideas are flowing more freely
×ÖÄ» ×Ö and some of these ideas from the subconscious
Ä» can percolate into conscious awareness more readily.
×ÖÄ» He's found that this temporary brain state,
×Ö when you're open to creativity,
Ä» is actually something we can easily induce.
×ÖÄ» People can get there with lots of different ways,
×ÖÄ» whether it's meditation, or a long run, or a bath,
×ÖÄ» there's lots of ways to down-regulate your frontal lobes
×ÖÄ» temporarily and allow creative ideas to flow.
×Ö Rex has discovered the frontal lobes
Ä» play a powerful gate-keeping role in our creativity.
×ÖÄ» But what's intriguing is that in the research,
×ÖÄ» this bit of brain keeps on turning up again and again.
×ÖÄ» It's now showing up in the work of people studying insight.
×ÖÄ» It seems some people are naturally hypofrontal -
×ÖÄ» their frontal lobes are a little less active, all of the time.
×ÖÄ» People who tend to solve problems with insight have a lower
×ÖÄ» base level of frontal lobe activity,
×ÖÄ» in other words their frontal lobes are not controlling them,
×Ö focusing them as much.
Ä» It's more of a free for all.
×Ö I mean, different brain activity
Ä» doing all sorts of different things at once.
×ÖÄ» And of course,
×ÖÄ» we now know that this transient dip in frontal lobe activity
×ÖÄ» is what helps you lose your inhibitions when you improvise.
×ÖÄ» It's not that scientists have located the ultimate
×ÖÄ» source of creativity.
×Ö But it is this area of the brain
Ä» ×ÖÄ» with its ability to release your mental handcuffs
×ÖÄ» that is at the forefront of current research.
×ÖÄ» For centuries, creativity has been a subject considered
×ÖÄ» off-limits to scientists.
×Ö It's seemed too elusive,
Ä» too subjective to be studied.
×ÖÄ» Creativity and music, art, improvisation,
×Ö all these things, they are magical things to experience,
Ä» ×ÖÄ» but I know that they are not magic,
×ÖÄ» they happen because we have brains that function
×Ö in a certain way that allow us to do these things,
Ä» and so I want to make a distinction between the fact
×ÖÄ» that these experiences might be transformative,
×ÖÄ» for us they might be profound life-changing things
×Ö we'll never forget,
Ä» but that doesn't mean that they can't be explained.
×ÖÄ» Now things are very different.
×ÖÄ» At last we have to tools to explore it.
×ÖÄ» This is incredibly exciting.
×Ö Now we have the tools,
Ä» ×Ö we're starting to really uncover what creativity is,
Ä» what goes on in the brain
×Ö when people have moments of creativity,
Ä» and it is just incredibly fascinating,
×ÖÄ» the next ten, 15, 20 years are going to be amazing.
×Ö But for all that science has revealed,
Ä» we are still a long way
×ÖÄ» from coming up with a complete understanding of creativity.
×ÖÄ» There's lots of these theories rumbling around,
×ÖÄ» and what we're trying to do
×ÖÄ» is put together a theory of creativity,
×ÖÄ» and how it's manifested in the brain.
×ÖÄ» We're getting close but we're not quite there yet.
×ÖÄ» We have all these different scientists
×ÖÄ» that have pieces of the puzzle,
×ÖÄ» but no-one's put it together quite yet
×ÖÄ» to make a beautiful picture.
×ÖÄ» But while we wait for that beautiful picture to emerge,
×Ö in the meantime
Ä» we can at least all become a bit more creative.
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