Eureka? Yes, Eureka!

Gray Matter

By JOHN KOUNIOS, New York Times, June 10, 2017

In the commencement address he delivered at Harvard last month, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief
executive of Facebook, warned the graduating students not to trust the story of innovation that
Hollywood promotes namely, the idea of a single eureka moment in which a lone thinker has a
groundbreaking epiphany. He characterized this idea as a dangerous lie that discourages real
creativity.

You know what else movies get wrong about innovation? Mr. Zuckerberg added. No one writes
math formulas on glass. Thats not a thing.

Actually, that is a thing, although sometimes people carve their formulas in stone if there isnt any
glass to write on.

One day in 1843, for instance, the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton was strolling along
the Royal Canal in Dublin when he had a sudden insight. As he later described it, an electric circuit
seemed to close; and a spark flashed forth. Hamiltons epiphany concerned so-called complex
numbers. His idea, which took the form of a mathematical equation, would become (and remains
today) an important tool for engineers and physicists. Hamilton immediately chiseled the equation
on a stone bridge spanning the canal.

As this anecdote suggests, the eureka moment is not a dangerous lie. On the contrary, it is a real
and benevolent force of innovation and progress. Many advancements have resulted from a single
bolt of understanding. Other examples include the geneticist Barbara McClintocks comprehension
of translocation of genetic material; Paul McCartneys hearing the melody of Yesterday in his head
as he awoke one morning; the pharmacologist Otto Loewis realization about how nerve cells
communicate with one another; and the Buddhas insight into the nature of human suffering.

Laboratory research backs up the historical accounts. Experiments that the cognitive psychologist
Roderick W. Smith and I conducted in the 1990s by showed that a person can solve a problem say,
an anagram by having the solution become available to him or her suddenly and in a complete
chunk: Insights do sometimes spring to mind in their final, turnkey form. More recent research has
shown that these aha solutions tend to be more reliable than consciously, methodically worked-
out answers.

Brain-imaging studies from my laboratory and the lab of my collaborator Mark Beeman show that
eureka moments are associated with a distinctive burst of high-frequency activity in the brains right
temporal lobe. This burst of activity is preceded by a brief brain blink during which a person is
momentarily less aware of his or her environment. Neither of these neural patterns is detectable
when a person solves a problem analytically.
Some people are naturally more likely to have eureka moments than other people their brains
seem to operate in a slightly different fashion but almost everyone has these creative insights
from time to time. Its even possible to cultivate them. Studies have revealed factors that can nudge
a persons brain into a state that is amenable to eureka moments. One of the most potent, as my
colleagues and I have demonstrated, is emotion: People tend to have creative insights when they are
in a positive, relaxed mood. When they are anxious, their thinking narrows and becomes analytical
and cautious, which can help them to critique and refine ideas.

Though eureka-style insights appear suddenly in your awareness, its important to stress that they
dont come into existence from nothing. They usually consist of new connections between things
that you already know. Your ability to make new connections is limited or empowered by the
amount of knowledge you have. So if your goal is to be struck by new ideas, you first have to do the
relevant homework in whatever field you hope to be innovative.

Its also worth noting that although creative insight and analytical thinking are distinct modes of
thought, they complement each other. Some eureka moments present insights that are in need of
more systematic elaboration before they can be implemented. It may take several insights, each
followed by analytical work, to produce, refine and assemble all the ideas necessary to complete a
complex project.

Likewise, you may want to start approaching a problem with analytic thinking and then, if you reach
an impasse, take a break to do something less demanding. Recent research suggests that your
mental work on the problem may continue unconsciously and later produce a eureka moment.
Alternating between these modes of thought can be a powerful way to generate, critique and
perfect your ideas, whether they pertain to an everyday problem or the next big thing.

With respect to Mr. Zuckerberg (whose speech was otherwise uplifting and laudable), the idea of the
eureka moment isnt oppressive. Its liberating. To know that a great idea can pop into your head at
any moment is a thrilling and in the face of frustration, sustaining thought.

Write that on glass or chisel it in stone. Better yet, post it on Facebook.

John Kounios is a professor of psychology at Drexel University and an author of The Eureka Factor:
Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain.