The Neuroscience Behind How FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts Work Excerpts from Articles in The New Yorker and Fast Company Note: What follows are all direct quotes from the articles themselves except for the sections in italics which directly refer to FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts which are described in FOCUS. The Catalyst for Innovation. Guided Brainstorming for Innovators. Also, all boldface highlights in the article excerpts are mine. The Eureka Hunt. Why do good ideas come to us when they do? By Jonah Lehrer, The New Yorker, July 28, 2008 Excerpts: “There is something inherently mysterious about moments of insight, like Archimedes shouting ‘Eureka!’…and…Isaac Newton…and the apple…” “Such tales all share a few essential features, which psychologists and neuroscientists use to define ‘the insight experience.’ ” “The first of these is the impasse: before there can be a breakthrough, there has to be a mental block.” “… another key feature of insight: the feeling of certainty that accompanies the idea.” “Brain-imaging techniques are revealing how our minds produce insight.” “…neurons in the right hemisphere are collecting information from a larger area of cortical space [than the left hemisphere].” “[Right hemisphere neurons] are less precise but better connected. When the brain is searching for an insight, these are the cells that are most likely to produce it.” “The insight process…is a delicate mental balancing act. At first, the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem. “ “But, once the brain is sufficiently focused, the cortex needs to relax –in order to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight.” “The relaxation phase is crucial. That’s why so many insights happen during warm showers.” “The insight process is an act of cognitive deliberation—the brain must be focused on the task at hand—[And] transformed by accidental, serendipitous connections.” “We must concentrate, but we must concentrate on letting the mind wander.” “Using EEG, he has found that he can tell which subjects will solve insight puzzles –up to eight seconds before the insight actually arrives. One of the key predictive signals is a steady rhythm of alpha waves emanating from the right hemisphere. Alpha waves typically correlate with a state of relaxation…[Relaxation] makes the brain more receptive to new and unusual ideas.” “One of the surprising lessons of this research is that trying to force an insight can actually prevent the insight.” “While it’s commonly assumed that the best way to solve a difficult problem is to focus, minimize distractions, and pay attention only to the relevant details…this clenched state of mind may inhibit the sort of creative connections that lead to sudden breakthroughs. We suppress the very type of brain activity that we should be encouraging.” “Poincaré credited his sudden mathematical insight to “unconscious work,” an ability to mull over the mathematics while he was preoccupied with unrelated activities –like talking to a friend on the bus.” “In his 1908 essay “Mathematical Creation,” Poincaré insisted that…the best way to think about complex problems is to immerse yourself in the problem until you hit an impasse. Then, when it seems that “nothing good is accomplished,” you should ﬁnd a way to distract yourself–preferably by going on a “walk or a journey. The answer will arrive when you least expect it.” “You’ve got to know when to step back,” Kounios [one of the scientists interviewed for this article] said. “If you’re in an environment that forces you to produce and produce, and you feel very stressed, then you’re not going to have any insights.” “Concentration, it seems, comes with the hidden cost of diminished creativity. ‘There’s a good reason Google puts Ping-Pong tables in their headquarters,’ Kounios said.” “If you want to encourage insights, then you’ve got to also encourage people to relax.” “Jung-Beeman’s latest paper investigates why people who are in a good mood are so much better at solving insight puzzles. On average, they solve nearly twenty per cent more C.R.A. problems.” Summary Paragraph from the Article: “The most mysterious aspect of insight is not the revelation itself but what happens next…The brain is an infinite library of associations, a cacophony of competing ideas, and yet, as soon as the right association appears, we know.” “The new thought, which is represented by that rush of gamma waves in the right hemisphere, immediately grabs our attention. There is something paradoxical and bizarre about this. On the one hand, an epiphany is a surprising event; we are startled by what we’ve just discovered. Some part of our brain, however, clearly isn’t surprised at all, which is why we are able to instantly recognize the insight.” “As soon as the insight happens, it just seems so obvious,” Schooler said. “People can’t believe they didn’t see it before.” FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts are designed to enable clients to better control this insight process. CustomCatalysts are specifically designed to light up existing neural pathways in their brain that clients are unaware of. FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts are purposely based on the client’s list of favorite things. That’s because thinking about personal favorite things induce “good mood” feelings. And, as the New Yorker article points out, people in a “good mood” are better able to solve insight puzzles. For decades the best compliment from a client for me has been…“duh!!!” That is, they realize the answer is so obvious. CustomCatalysts are designed to help clients see the obvious insight solution they were blind to before. Neuroscience Sheds New Light on Creativity By Gregory Berns, Fast Company Magazine, September 17, 2008 Excerpts: “Recent advances in neuroscience–driven by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that lets scientists watch brain activity as never before--have changed what we know about key attributes of creativity.” “Creativity and imagination begin with perception. The brain is fundamentally a lazy piece of meat. It doesn't want to waste energy.” Which is why we get stuck thinking the same thing over and over. It's easier for our brain to do that. “If you imagine something that you have never actually seen...the possibilities for creative thinking become much greater…because the brain can no longer rely on connections shaped by past experience.” The "forced association" that a FocusCatalyst CustomCatalyst does for you–matching your answers to the 8 Questions with your 8 Favorites--two totally, unrelated, different things--forces your brain to think about your project or problem in totally new ways. “...new insights come from new people and new environments–any circumstance in which the brain has a hard time predicting what will happen next.” A FocusCatalyst CustomCatalyst is designed to be a fire hose of ideas. It's designed to kind of fry your brain (to be perfectly honest)--all the better to put your brain into a state where it has a hard time predicting what will happen next. When the brain is in that kind of state, new perceptions (and creative solutions) can be seen. “You need a novel stimulus – –either a new piece of information or an unfamiliar environment – to jolt attentional systems awake.” “The more radical the change, the greater the likelihood of fresh insights.” That's exactly what a FocusCatalyst CustomCatalyst does. It jolts attentional systems awake. And that leads to fresh insights. “Novel experiences are so effective at unleashing the imagination because--they force the perceptual system out of categorization, out of the tendency of the brain to take shortcuts.” Again, that's what FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts are designed to do.

The Neuroscience

Behind How

FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts

Work

Excerpts from Articles in

The New Yorker and Fast Company

Note:

What follows are all direct quotes from the articles themselves

except for the sections in italics which directly refer to

FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts which are described in

FOCUS. The Catalyst for Innovation. Guided Brainstorming for Innovators.

Also, all boldface highlights in the article excerpts are mine.

The Eureka Hunt. Why do good ideas come to us when they do?

By Jonah Lehrer, The New Yorker, July 28, 2008

Excerpts:

“There is something inherently mysterious about moments of insight, like Archimedes shouting ‘Eureka!’…and…Isaac Newton…and the apple…”

“Such tales all share a few essential features, which psychologists and neuroscientists use to define ‘the insight experience.’ ”

“The first of these is the impasse: before there can be a breakthrough, there has to be a mental block.”

“… another key feature of insight: the feeling of certainty that accompanies the idea.”

“Brain-imaging techniques are revealing how our minds produce insight.”

“…neurons in the right hemisphere are collecting information from a larger area of cortical space [than the left hemisphere].”

“[Right hemisphere neurons] are less precise but better connected. When the brain is searching for an insight, these are the cells that are most likely to produce it.”

“The insight process…is a delicate mental balancing act. At first, the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem. “

“But, once the brain is sufficiently focused, the cortex needs to relax –in order to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight.”

“The relaxation phase is crucial. That’s why so many insights happen during warm showers.”

“The insight process is an act of cognitive deliberation—the brain must be focused on the task at hand—[And] transformed by accidental, serendipitous connections.”

“We must concentrate, but we must concentrate on letting the mind wander.”

“Using EEG, he has found that he can tell which subjects will solve insight puzzles –up to eight seconds before the insight actually arrives. One of the key predictive signals is a steady rhythm of alpha waves emanating from the right hemisphere. Alpha waves typically correlate with a state of relaxation…[Relaxation] makes the brain more receptive to new and unusual ideas.”

“One of the surprising lessons of this research is that trying to force an insight can actually prevent the insight.”

“While it’s commonly assumed that the best way to solve a difficult problem is to focus, minimize distractions, and pay attention only to the relevant details…this clenched state of mind may inhibit the sort of creative connections that lead to sudden breakthroughs. We suppress the very type of brain activity that we should be encouraging.”

“Poincaré credited his sudden mathematical insight to “unconscious work,” an ability to mull over the mathematics while he was preoccupied with unrelated activities –like talking to a friend on the bus.”

“In his 1908 essay “Mathematical Creation,” Poincaré insisted that…the best way to think about complex problems is to immerse yourself in the problem until you hit an impasse. Then, when it seems that “nothing good is accomplished,” you should ﬁnd a way to distract yourself–preferably by going on a “walk or a journey. The answer will arrive when you least expect it.”

“You’ve got to know when to step back,” Kounios [one of the scientists interviewed for this article] said. “If you’re in an environment that forces you to produce and produce, and you feel very stressed, then you’re not going to have any insights.”

“Concentration, it seems, comes with the hidden cost of diminished creativity. ‘There’s a good reason Google puts Ping-Pong tables in their headquarters,’ Kounios said.”

“If you want to encourage insights, then you’ve got to also encourage people to relax.”

“Jung-Beeman’s latest paper investigates why people who are in a good mood are so much better at solving insight puzzles. On average, they solve nearly twenty per cent more C.R.A. problems.”

Summary Paragraph from the Article:

“The most mysterious aspect of insight is not the revelation itself but what happens next…The brain is an infinite library of associations, a cacophony of competing ideas, and yet, as soon as the right association appears, we know.”

“The new thought, which is represented by that rush of gamma waves in the right hemisphere, immediately grabs our attention. There is something paradoxical and bizarre about this. On the one hand, an epiphany is a surprising event; we are startled by what we’ve just discovered. Some part of our brain, however, clearly isn’t surprised at all, which is why we are able to instantly recognize the insight.”

“As soon as the insight happens, it just seems so obvious,” Schooler said. “People can’t believe they didn’t see it before.”

FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts are designed to enable clients to better control this insight process. CustomCatalysts are specifically designed to light up existing neural pathways in their brain that clients are unaware of.

FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts are purposely based on the client’s list of favorite things. That’s because thinking about personal favorite things induce “good mood” feelings.

And, as the New Yorker article points out, people in a “good mood” are better able to solve insight puzzles.

For decades the best compliment from a client for me has been…“duh!!!” That is, they realize the answer is so obvious.

CustomCatalysts are designed to help clients see the obvious insight solution they were blind to before.

Neuroscience Sheds New Light on Creativity

By Gregory Berns, Fast Company Magazine, September 17, 2008

Excerpts:

“Recent advances in neuroscience–driven by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that lets scientists watch brain activity as never before--have changed what we know about key attributes of creativity.”

“Creativity and imagination begin with perception. The brain is fundamentally a lazy piece of meat. It doesn't want to waste energy.”

Which is why we get stuck thinking the same thing over and over. It's easier for our brain to do that.

“If you imagine something that you have never actually seen...the possibilities for creative thinking become much greater…because the brain can no longer rely on connections shaped by past experience.”

The "forced association" that a FocusCatalyst CustomCatalyst does for you–matching your answers to the 8 Questions with your 8 Favorites--two totally, unrelated, different things--forces your brain to think about your project or problem in totally new ways.

“...new insights come from new people and new environments–any circumstance in which the brain has a hard time predicting what will happen next.”

A FocusCatalyst CustomCatalyst is designed to be a fire hose of ideas. It's designed to kind of fry your brain (to be perfectly honest)--all the better to put your brain into a state where it has a hard time predicting what will happen next. When the brain is in that kind of state, new perceptions (and creative solutions) can be seen.

“You need a novel stimulus – –either a new piece of information or an unfamiliar environment – to jolt attentional systems awake.”

“The more radical the change, the greater the likelihood of fresh insights.”

That's exactly what a FocusCatalyst CustomCatalyst does. It jolts attentional systems awake. And that leads to fresh insights.

“Novel experiences are so effective at unleashing the imagination because--they force the perceptual system out of categorization, out of the tendency of the brain to take shortcuts.”

Again, that's what FocusCatalyst CustomCatalysts are designed to do.