×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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