Chill Out: The Key to Insight is Relaxation

New Yorker magazine has a great piece about how insight works in the brain. Jonah Lerher, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, explores what happens in the brain when revelations, insights and new ideas are triggered. The key finding is that insight comes easiest when we’re relaxed and not focused on the details.

From the New Yorker article:

Kounios tells a story about an expert Zen meditator who took part in one of the C.R.A. insight experiments. At first, the meditator couldn’t solve any of the insight problems. “This Zen guy went through thirty or so of the verbal puzzles and just drew a blank,” Kounios said. “He was used to being very focussed, but you can’t solve these problems if you’re too focussed.” Then, just as he was about to give up, he started solving one puzzle after another, until, by the end of the experiment, he was getting them all right. It was an unprecedented streak. “Normally, people don’t get better as the task goes along,” Kounios said. “If anything, they get a little bored.” Kounios believes that the dramatic improvement of the Zen meditator came from his paradoxical ability to focus on not being focussed, so that he could pay attention to those remote associations in the right hemisphere. “He had the cognitive control to let go,” Kounios said. “He became an insight machine.”

[via Kottke]