Don’t bother me. I’m having an aha moment!
© iStockphoto

What Do Aha Moments Feel Like?

Flex your brain and you may find out. Look at these three words. What’s another word that can combine with each word and produce a familiar compound or a two-word phrase?

loser  /  throat  /  spot   

Here’s another:

show  /  life  /  row

Try some harder examples, knowing that the word you think of can combine at the beginning or the end of the words in the set:

crab  /  pine  /  sauce

fence  /  card  /  master

When you came up with a solution,* was it sudden and obvious? If so, you probably experienced an aha moment and found the solution by insight.

What Do Aha Moments Look Like in Your Brain?

Researchers John Kounios, Professor of Psychology at Drexel University, and Mark Jung-Beeman, Associate Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, have long been interested in how the brain performs when it solves problems analytically or, conversely, by insight.

In an insight solution, the professors expected an “Aha!” when the brain connects known concepts in new ways to get to the solution. And, if insight solutions and non-insight solutions are different cognitive processes, they knew the underlying brain activity would look different as well.

In the study:

• Researchers trained participants in the recognition of an insight.**
  

  Figure 1. fMRI, showing area of increased brain activity during an insight solution

• Participants viewed sets of words, including the ones above. When they found the combining word, they pressed a button and said the solution. They then pressed another button to say whether they found the solution by insight or not.

• For about one-half of the participants, brain activity was mapped via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

• For the other half, gamma wave power was measured, and comparisons drawn between those who solved the problem by insight and those who did not. Gamma waves are particularly fast, high-frequency brain waves whose power can be measured by electroencephalography (EEG), and changes in power can be shown over time.

The researchers found that insight solutions are a unique cognitive process with a distinct pattern of brain activity. The yellow area below shows the increase in gamma power for people who found the solution by insight (red line) and those who did not (blue line).

Figure 2. Gamma waves increase during an insight solution.
Y-axis shows the power of gamma brain waves. X-axis shows time elapsed in the trial, from prep to display of the prompt (first green dot) to button press signaling the solution (yellow arrow).

Oh, I See

Wow! So that’s what an aha moment looks like when it happens in your brain!

Figure 3. Bright area indicates brain activity during an insight solution, measured by EEG. Red dots show placement of EEG electrodes.

Both the mapping done by fMRI (see Figure 2) and that done during the EEG measurements (see right) show an area of increased activity above the right ear.

Professor Jung-Beeman cautions against labeling this area as “the insight area” since it is involved in other tasks, and other parts of the brain are involved in insight solutions.

However, the fact that this area was active during insight solutions and inactive in non-insight solutions shows that the two are processed differently.

It is particularly noteworthy that the active area for insight solutions to the trial’s verbal problems is in the right hemisphere since it is the left hemisphere that is most often related to language processing.

Why Do Aha Moments Matter?

In an aha moment, a person has a sudden comprehension, often reinterpreting a situation or combining known elements differently to solve a problem or invent something new.

Not only is it personally satisfying to solve a problem, get a joke, figure out a puzzle, derive a literary theme, or attain a personal insight, but creativity and advancements in just about any field depend on insights, or aha moments.

Brain science research from Dr. Kounios,  Dr. Jung-Beeman, and others is helping us understand how insights happen so that we might maximize their frequency and impact.

Aha moments lead to innovations—all beneficial, whether they affect one individual’s personal satisfaction or impact the world. Since our goal at OIC Moments is to feed your mind and fuel your imagination with aha moments, we thought you’d like to know the evolving brain science behind them.

Feed your mind and increase your aha moments.
© Spots Illustration / Veer

*Solutions are: 1. sore (sore loser, sore throat, sore spot); 2. boat (showboat, lifeboat, rowboat); 3. apple (crabapple, pineapple, applesauce); 4. post (fence post, postcard, postmaster).

**The definition of insight used in the study: “A feeling of insight is a kind of ‘Aha!’ characterized by suddenness and obviousness. You may not be sure how you came up with the answer, but are relatively confident that it is correct without having to mentally check it. It is as though the answer came into mind all at once—when you first thought of the word, you simply knew it was the answer. This feeling does not have to be overwhelming, but should resemble what was just described.”

Research results and Figures 1-3 were originally published by Dr. Kounios, Dr. Jung-Beeman, and others in “Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight” in PLOS Biology.

To learn more about the brain, see this slide show from the Mayo Clinic. 

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

This fly crafted from different foods is perfectly edible.
The actual insect may be harder for many to swallow.
© Thinkstock

New Views About Insects as Food

When I was a child, Brussels sprouts were disgusting. I knew this quite well because so many of the book and TV characters I loved told me so. No way was I going to eat Brussels sprouts!

Then a respected friend, who happened to be a Brussels sprouts supporter, convinced me to try the tiny cabbages. I did, and, it turns out, Brussels sprouts are actually pretty good.

My view of Brussels sprouts changed when someone I knew and respected convinced me to try them.

Is it possible for us to apply this same thinking to something we’d rather squash under our shoe than eat?

I’m talking about bugs. As food.

Can a beautiful presentation make fried worms taste delicious?
© Thinkstock

A Cookbook Recommendation

David George Gordon, author of The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook, is a strong supporter of entomophagy, or eating bugs.

He thinks that you shouldn’t just throw an insect in food for the sake of adding an insect, though. His opinion is that recipes should use bugs to add a specific taste or texture. He also happens to prefer his insects whole and visible rather than ground and hidden.

So you can see the bugs. And their six legs. And often many eyes.

Apparently, fried grasshoppers are crunchy and taste
mostly like the oil or seasoning that covers them.
© Thinkstock

A World-Wide Recommendation

The United Nations released a publication supporting bug-eating. It says:

• Bugs are more environmentally efficient to raise than other meat sources.
• Insects are packed with protein.
• They occur naturally throughout the world.
• Many cultures already eat them.
• They can be eaten whole, thus requiring minimal processing.

These are logical reasons. I’m listening.

A Restaurant Recommendation

Monica Martinez has an edible-insect food cart, Don Bugito, in San Francisco.

Her web site explains that she offers “rather unusual but tasty creative foods inspired by Mexican pre-Hispanic and contemporary cuisine with locally sourced ingredients. We believe in the future of edible insects as a smart answer to the existing demand for and shortage of high-protein foods on the planet.”

At first, Martinez herself was not so certain about the idea of eating bugs. Then she observed that the insects actually are not dirt-consuming filth. They just eat grains and carrots. After that, the idea of eating them didn’t seem so bad to her.

She goes on to explain that the process of, uh, preparing the insects is quite simple compared to another live protein source: “I would freeze [the insects] so they’d die. I have some in my fridge right now. It’s easy and simple compared to having a cow in my backyard. I’d have to sacrifice the cow, kill the cow, blood all over, organs all over. What am I going to do with that?”

Martinez serves insect tacos and ice cream, as well as chocolate covered salted crickets.

Chocolate?

OK, I’m almost convinced.

An Award-Winning Recommendation

A group of McGill University students recently accepted the 2013 Hult Prize for their innovative idea to produce year-round crops of micro-livestock (a new name—a new view?).

Noting that 2.5 billion people worldwide consume insects, the team visited different insect farms in Thailand, Mexico, and Kenya to observe the current growing and harvesting techniques. They shared their ideas for creating easier-to-harvest and more efficient and affordable crops to the enthusiastic farmers. They even started working with the Kenyan farmers to grow crickets.

While the students had thought that crickets were the ultimate solution world-wide, through research, they learned it is better to stay local. So grasshoppers are the proposed crop in Mexico, while palm weevils flourish in Ghana and caterpillars in Botswana.

Oh, I see! It sounds like there is a solid future in this idea.

People disagree on how fried silkworms taste.
Some say they have very little taste. Others say they taste like shrimp.
One person described the taste as “coconut cream.”
© Thinkstock

Bug Appétit!

Eating insects seems like a very logical idea. Starting with ground-up insects that aren’t staring back at me may be easiest. In time, I might progress to whole insects.

And with a new view on eating insects as food, I may soon be asking my waiter, “Excuse me, where is the fly in my soup?”

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.