Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
Suppressing the Brain's Good Sense 'filter' can improve creativity
Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that inhibiting this filter can boost performance for tasks in which unfiltered, creative thoughts present an advantage.
Their work was published in the journal Cognitive Neuroscience.
Previous studies have shown that the prefrontal cortex -- in particular, the left prefrontal cortex -- is one important area of the brain that supports cognitive control.
 |
| Thompson-Schill |
In this task, participants are shown pictures of everyday objects and are asked to quickly come up with uses for them that are out of the ordinary, such as using a baseball bat as a rolling pin.
Participants see a sequence of 60 objects, one every nine seconds, and the researchers measure how long it takes for them to come up with a valid response, or if they are unable to do so before the next picture appears.
The researchers hypothesized that high levels of cognitive control would be a detriment to coming up with these kinds of uncommon uses.
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| Evangelia Chrysikou |
"However, to come up with the idea of using a baseball bat as a rolling pin, you have to consider things like its shape and the material it's made of."
"The real takeaway," Thompson-Schill said, "is that when you give people a task for which they do not know the goal -- such as showing them an object and asking, 'What else can you do with this thing' -- anything that they would normally do to filter out irrelevant information about the object will hurt their ability to do the task."
Experiments to test such hypotheses have been aided by new ways of non-invasively manipulating neurons in specific areas of the brain, inducing a variety of temporary changes in perception and performance.
The Method
The method Thompson-Schill's team used, called transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, involves passing a weak electrical charge through the brain, aiming the charge's path so it intersects with areas thought to be associated with an ability or behaviour.
This charge can influence the electrical activity that constitutes cell-to-cell communication in those areas.
"TDCS is believed to induce incremental shifts in the electrical potential of neuronal membranes, making it more or less likely that neurons will reach their threshold for firing," Hamilton said.
"In this instance, we employed stimulation in a way that would make it harder for neurons to fire, thereby diminishing behaviorally relevant activity in that part of the brain."
Participants were first split into three groups corresponding to three experimental conditions; one group would receive TDCS to their left prefrontal cortex for the duration of the task, a second group would receive TDCS to their right prefrontal cortex and a third group would receive what amounted to a placebo.
TDCS Experiment
TDCS produces a slight tingling sensation on the scalp when it is first applied, so those in the third group received only a brief period of stimulation before the task began. They did not receive continuous stimulation throughout.
"We wouldn't want to think that the stimulation affected everything," Thompson-Schill said.
"So if we found an effect when participants were remembering numbers, we'd be worried about our interpretation of the data."
As expected, none of the experimental conditions affected participants' performance when asked to recall the sequences of numbers, or when they were asked to say the common uses of the objects they saw, but there was a marked difference between those who received tDCS to their left prefrontal cortex and those who didn't when completing the uncommon-use task.
The right prefrontal cortex and placebo groups couldn't come up with uncommon uses for an average of 15 out of 60 objects, whereas those whose left prefrontal cortices were being inhibited only missed an average of eight.
The latter group was also able to provide correct responses an average of a second faster than the former two.
"A second faster difference is huge in psychology research. We're used to seeing differences measured in milliseconds," Thompson-Schill said. This is probably the biggest effect I've seen over my 20 years in research."
These results lend credence to the idea that high levels of cognitive control may be a disadvantage in some circumstances, such as in early development.
"We differ from non-human primates in having a long period of immaturity in our prefrontal cortex," Thompson-Schill said, "so we started considering whether this might not be an unfortunate accident of nature but rather a feature of our species' developmental path.
The slow development of the prefrontal cortex is one reason children fail at many attention-based tasks but excel at imaginative ones. It may also aid children in rapidly acquiring new knowledge.
"There are things that are important to not filter, in particular when you are learning," Thompson-Schill said. "If you throw out information about your environment as being irrelevant, you miss opportunities to learn about those things."
The research was supported by the US National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Pennsylvania.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Bilingual children outperform their peers - Creativity
Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to new research.
The University of Strathclyde studied primary school pupils who spoke English or Italian – half of whom also spoke Gaelic or Sardinian – and found that bilingual children were significantly more successful in the tasks set for them.
Gaelic-speaking children were, in turn, more successful than the Sardinian speakers.
The differences were linked to the mental alertness required to switch between languages, which could develop skills useful in other types of thinking.
The further advantage for Gaelic-speaking children may have been due to the formal teaching of the language and its extensive literature.
Dr Fraser Lauchlan, an honorary lecturer at the University of Strathclyde's School of Psychological Sciences and Health, led the research which was conducted with colleagues at University of Cagliari in Sardinia.
He said: "Bilingualism is now largely seen as being beneficial to children but there remains a view that it can be confusing, and so potentially detrimental to them.
"Our study has found it can have benefits, not only in language but in arithmetic, problem solving and enabling children to think creatively."
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Dyslexia: Is It Closely Lined to Creativity?
Good news for those who can spell, the answer is no. It appears that more dyslectic people simply elect to work very committedly in the non-linguistic creative professions.
To be successful, dyslectic people actually have to work harder to overcome their linguistic challenges.
Fortunately, the best predictor of anyone's performance is not their IQ or personality, it is the amount of time one spends on a particular task.
Dyslexia is hereditary and, fortunately, one can learn to live with even severe dyslexia. A dyslectic person may not be well suited for teaching English or working as an editor in a publishing house, however, it does give them a distinct advantage in other creative professions.
Having struggled with reading and writing, the dyslectic person has failed early and often, thereby teaching them to persevere.
As Winston Churchill, another famous dyslectic and creative individual, noted: "Never give up - -never, never, never give up."
Advantages
What then are the advantages, if any, of being dyslexic in overcoming challenges? The early age confrontation of apparently insurmountable challenges teaches the dyslectic person to persevere in the face of difficulty and failure.
Solutions
They learn early to look at problems from multiple angles and use other skills to succeed.
Dyslectic people often colour-code information to aide their learning, using three-dimensional drawings to solve algebra problems and come up with intricate mnemotechnical cues to improve retention.
Working on small creative tricks to overcome challenges may help make them better prepared to solve problems.
It has been said that "luck is when opportunity meet preparation" and dyslectic people could thus appear to be "luckier" problem solvers.
Are people who are actually good at spelling be at a disadvantage?
Since reading, writing and arithmetic are given a high priority in most school systems and IQ and other standardised tests favour people with linguistic skills, perfecting what one is being rewarded for can narrow one's development in other areas where there was also the possibility to excel.
One of the secrets to life is to avoid repeatedly chastising oneself over what is not done well.
A dyslectic may never become the best speller; however, a person can live happily with being mediocre in this area and simply delegate the more demanding writing tasks.
Being content with being average in one area, dyslectics are freed up to invest the over 10,000 hours required to become an expert in another area.
They can then leverage their inborn abilities and turn those abilities into a strong competitive advantage in an area in which they excel.
The Creative Economy may be the fastest growing segment of the Western World and creativity is now, more than ever, the source of this progress.
By encouraging people early on to find and grow their unique natural abilities to innovate and appreciating them for what they create, rather than for what they consume, we will have created yet another novel way of spelling success.
Credit this article to Soren Petersen
To be successful, dyslectic people actually have to work harder to overcome their linguistic challenges.
Fortunately, the best predictor of anyone's performance is not their IQ or personality, it is the amount of time one spends on a particular task.
Dyslexia is hereditary and, fortunately, one can learn to live with even severe dyslexia. A dyslectic person may not be well suited for teaching English or working as an editor in a publishing house, however, it does give them a distinct advantage in other creative professions.
Having struggled with reading and writing, the dyslectic person has failed early and often, thereby teaching them to persevere.
As Winston Churchill, another famous dyslectic and creative individual, noted: "Never give up - -never, never, never give up."
Advantages
What then are the advantages, if any, of being dyslexic in overcoming challenges? The early age confrontation of apparently insurmountable challenges teaches the dyslectic person to persevere in the face of difficulty and failure.
Solutions
They learn early to look at problems from multiple angles and use other skills to succeed.
Dyslectic people often colour-code information to aide their learning, using three-dimensional drawings to solve algebra problems and come up with intricate mnemotechnical cues to improve retention.
Working on small creative tricks to overcome challenges may help make them better prepared to solve problems.
It has been said that "luck is when opportunity meet preparation" and dyslectic people could thus appear to be "luckier" problem solvers.
Are people who are actually good at spelling be at a disadvantage?
Since reading, writing and arithmetic are given a high priority in most school systems and IQ and other standardised tests favour people with linguistic skills, perfecting what one is being rewarded for can narrow one's development in other areas where there was also the possibility to excel.
One of the secrets to life is to avoid repeatedly chastising oneself over what is not done well.
A dyslectic may never become the best speller; however, a person can live happily with being mediocre in this area and simply delegate the more demanding writing tasks.
Being content with being average in one area, dyslectics are freed up to invest the over 10,000 hours required to become an expert in another area.
They can then leverage their inborn abilities and turn those abilities into a strong competitive advantage in an area in which they excel.
The Creative Economy may be the fastest growing segment of the Western World and creativity is now, more than ever, the source of this progress.
By encouraging people early on to find and grow their unique natural abilities to innovate and appreciating them for what they create, rather than for what they consume, we will have created yet another novel way of spelling success.
Credit this article to Soren Petersen
Monday, July 16, 2012
On Creativity - George Lois - YouTube (Strong Language)
Legendary designer, author, and contrarian George Lois, often regarded as the greatest art director of all time and called, much to his disgruntlement, “the original Mad Man.”
To celebrate his 81st birthday, here’s a wonderful short film by On Creativity, in which Lois reflects on the combinatorial nature of creativity and echoes insights we’ve already heard from other great creators — the power of cultivating a personal microculture, the idea that to invent is to choose, the importance of “being-in-the-world-ness,” the notion that to create is to discover and connect rather than “invent” out of thin air.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Student overcomes challenges with dyslexia to excel in art
Lizzie Snell, senior in fine arts, was in third grade when she was diagnosed with dyslexia. It was, for the longest time, a source of embarrassment for her.
The fear of being different was often a burden too heavy to bear, and Snell said she often worried about being made fun of as a child.
“When I was younger, I always kept it to myself because I thought people would treat me differently,” she said. “I didn’t even tell my best friends about it.”
Snell is one of the millions of Americans who have been diagnosed with dyslexia. The condition, which was originally documented as “word blindness,” affects an estimated 15 percent of the U.S. population, according to a February 4 article in the New York Times by Annie Murphy Paul.
The National Center for Learning Disabilities defines dyslexia as a “language processing disorder” which can “hinder reading, writing, spelling, and sometimes even speaking.” NCLD experts also state on their website that the neurological disorder causes the brain to “process and interpret information differently.”
“The way I think of it, is it makes it harder for me to retain information,” Snell said. “I’m capable of doing things like math and reading, I just have to work like 10 times harder to get there.”
Snell’s mother, Kerri, said that despite the challenges she faced, she never held Snell to a different standard than her other three kids.
“We always expected each of our four kids to do their very best,” Kerri said. “Lizzie always worked 100 times harder than her siblings did on school work. I never lowered my expectations for Lizzie.”
The fear of being different was often a burden too heavy to bear, and Snell said she often worried about being made fun of as a child.
“When I was younger, I always kept it to myself because I thought people would treat me differently,” she said. “I didn’t even tell my best friends about it.”
Snell is one of the millions of Americans who have been diagnosed with dyslexia. The condition, which was originally documented as “word blindness,” affects an estimated 15 percent of the U.S. population, according to a February 4 article in the New York Times by Annie Murphy Paul.
The National Center for Learning Disabilities defines dyslexia as a “language processing disorder” which can “hinder reading, writing, spelling, and sometimes even speaking.” NCLD experts also state on their website that the neurological disorder causes the brain to “process and interpret information differently.”
“The way I think of it, is it makes it harder for me to retain information,” Snell said. “I’m capable of doing things like math and reading, I just have to work like 10 times harder to get there.”
Snell’s mother, Kerri, said that despite the challenges she faced, she never held Snell to a different standard than her other three kids.
“We always expected each of our four kids to do their very best,” Kerri said. “Lizzie always worked 100 times harder than her siblings did on school work. I never lowered my expectations for Lizzie.”
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Dyslexia and Creativity
Looking back in history, Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Jørn Utzon, Agatha Christie and Albert Einstein were all dyslexic. So the question is, is dyslexia linked to creativity?
Unfortunately, the answer is no. It appears that more dyslexic people simply elect to work in the non-linguistic creative professions. To be successful, dyslexic people actually have to work harder to overcome their linguistic challenges.
Fortunately, the best predictor of anyone's performance is not their IQ or personality, it is the amount of time one spends on a particular task.
Dyslexia is hereditary and one can learn to live with even the most severe dyslexia. A dyslectic person may not be well suited for teaching English or working as an editor in a publishing house, however, it does give them a distinct advantage in other creative professions.
Having struggled with reading and writing, the dyslectic person has failed early and often, thereby teaching them to persevere. As Winston Churchill, another dyslexic, creative individual, noted: "Never give up - -never, never, never give up."
What then are the advantages of being dyslexic in overcoming challenges? The early age confrontation of apparently insurmountable challenges teaches the dyslexic person to persevere in the face of failure.
They learn early to look at problems from multiple angles and use other skills to succeed.
Dyslexic people often colour-code information to aide their learning, use three-dimensional drawings to solve algebra problems and come up with intricate mnemotechnical cues to improve retention.
Working on small creative tricks to overcome challenges may help make them better prepared to solve problems. It has been said that "luck is when opportunity meet preparation" and dyslexic people could thus appear to be "luckier" problem solvers.
This prompts the question: Might people who are actually good at spelling be at a disadvantage?
Since reading, writing and arithmetic are given a high priority in most school systems and IQ and other standardised tests favour people with linguistic skills, perfecting what one is being rewarded for can narrow one's development in other areas where there was the possibility to excel.
One of the secrets to life is to avoid chastising oneself over what is not done well. A dyslexic person may never become the best speller; however, a person can live happily with being mediocre in this area and simply delegate the more demanding writing tasks.
Being content with being average in one area, dyslexics are freed up to invest the over 10,000 hours required to become an expert in another area.
They can then leverage their inborn abilities and turn those abilities into a strong competitive advantage in an area in which they excel.
The Creative Economy may be the fastest growing segment of the Western World and creativity is now, more than ever, the source of this progress.
By encouraging people early on to find and grow their unique natural abilities to innovate and appreciating them for what they create, rather than for what they consume, we will have created yet another novel way of spelling success.
Unfortunately, the answer is no. It appears that more dyslexic people simply elect to work in the non-linguistic creative professions. To be successful, dyslexic people actually have to work harder to overcome their linguistic challenges.
Fortunately, the best predictor of anyone's performance is not their IQ or personality, it is the amount of time one spends on a particular task.
Dyslexia is hereditary and one can learn to live with even the most severe dyslexia. A dyslectic person may not be well suited for teaching English or working as an editor in a publishing house, however, it does give them a distinct advantage in other creative professions.
Having struggled with reading and writing, the dyslectic person has failed early and often, thereby teaching them to persevere. As Winston Churchill, another dyslexic, creative individual, noted: "Never give up - -never, never, never give up."
What then are the advantages of being dyslexic in overcoming challenges? The early age confrontation of apparently insurmountable challenges teaches the dyslexic person to persevere in the face of failure.
They learn early to look at problems from multiple angles and use other skills to succeed.
Dyslexic people often colour-code information to aide their learning, use three-dimensional drawings to solve algebra problems and come up with intricate mnemotechnical cues to improve retention.
Working on small creative tricks to overcome challenges may help make them better prepared to solve problems. It has been said that "luck is when opportunity meet preparation" and dyslexic people could thus appear to be "luckier" problem solvers.
This prompts the question: Might people who are actually good at spelling be at a disadvantage?
Since reading, writing and arithmetic are given a high priority in most school systems and IQ and other standardised tests favour people with linguistic skills, perfecting what one is being rewarded for can narrow one's development in other areas where there was the possibility to excel.
One of the secrets to life is to avoid chastising oneself over what is not done well. A dyslexic person may never become the best speller; however, a person can live happily with being mediocre in this area and simply delegate the more demanding writing tasks.
Being content with being average in one area, dyslexics are freed up to invest the over 10,000 hours required to become an expert in another area.
They can then leverage their inborn abilities and turn those abilities into a strong competitive advantage in an area in which they excel.
The Creative Economy may be the fastest growing segment of the Western World and creativity is now, more than ever, the source of this progress.
By encouraging people early on to find and grow their unique natural abilities to innovate and appreciating them for what they create, rather than for what they consume, we will have created yet another novel way of spelling success.
Friday, December 2, 2011
TEDxLondon - Sir Ken Robinson - YouTube
Sir Ken Robinson, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation. He is also one of the world's leading speakers with a profound impact on audiences everywhere. The videos of his famous 2006 and 2010 talks to the prestigious TED Conference have been seen by an estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries.
He works with governments in Europe, Asia and the USA, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies and some of the world's leading cultural organizations. In 1998, he led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government.
All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education(The Robinson Report) was published to wide acclaim in 1999. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, working with the ministers for training, education enterprise and culture.
The resulting blueprint for change, Unlocking Creativity, was adopted by politicians of all parties and by business, education and cultural leaders across the Province.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Ways of Thinking Katherine Hewlett
The impact of Dyslexia on learning and creativity in the visual Arts
Exhibition from Tuesday 4 to Saturday 29 October 2011
- October 4 to 8 Group Show
- October 11 to 15 Katherine Hewlett and Shevonne Bryant
- October 18 to 22 Leon Cole
- October 24 to 29 Nicholas Mc Arthur
The purpose is to investigate different artistic approaches to the process of their creative work through multi dimensional ways of thinking.
The exhibition ''Ways of Thinking'' is a result of evidence collected through mixed methods by working with artists as part of the research process.
The artists in this exhibition are case study participants!
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The Turkey and the Crow - The Tension Between Expertise and Creativity
Although we train students toward expertise and mastery, a tension seems to exist between cognitive efficiency and automaticity representing expertise, and divergent problem solving and innovation.
Once we started looking for the turkey-crow split, the more we started seeing it everywhere.
Please share your thoughts, comments, and criticisms, and share this video with your friends if you find it helpful. Education would really be much better if it recognized how fundamentally different turkey- and crow-biased thinkers approach learning. It wouldn't hurt either for more teachers, parents, professionals, and really everybody else came to appreciate the remarkable talents of the crow.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Creativity and Art therapy
The idea that people with Asperger's, autism and dyslexia might be gifted in mathematics or engineering or mechanical pursuits may be difficult to reconcile by many but the suggestion that some people with autism might be creative or artistic should make intuitive sense.
A new study of 'divergent thinking' i.e. the ability to generate a variety of new solutions to a problem, in people with brain damage hints at why some individuals with autism and dyslexia may be highly creative.
Though this is one of the first scientific studies to address the phenomenon of creativity in people with autism, it adds some scientific support to articles in the popular press that posthumously diagnose autism in long-dead thinkers and artists.
A 2004 book, Autism and Creativity, kicked off this trend by alleging that Einstein, Freud, Wittgenstein and the artist Andy Warhol would all probably merit a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism.
Other researchers have made similar claims about Warhol, the composer Bartok, the poet William Butler Yeats and other luminaries.
Some individuals with autism are also credited with 'visionary art,' created by those who have never received formal training and who may suffer from neuro-psychiatric diseases.
Roger Cardinal, who coined the term 'outsider art' in 1972, discussed six case histories of talented visual artists with varying degrees of autism in a 2009 article. Some of their work is highly lauded and hangs in museums today.
In the midst of this, how do we reconcile the 'insistence on sameness' characteristic of autism with the kind of divergent thinking that defines creativity?
In the new study, researchers showed 40 people with lesions in different regions of the brain pictures of 30 circles drawn on a sheet of paper. They gave each participant five minutes to draw as many pictures as they could of meaningful objects incorporating one of the circles.
Participants with damage to the left hemisphere, which is responsible for language processing, turned out to be more creative than healthy controls, producing more pictures in various designs. By contrast, people with damage to the medial prefrontal cortex, a right hemisphere region involved in planning and decision-making, are less creative than healthy controls.
The researchers speculate that the deterioration of language abilities in people with left hemisphere brain damage opens up possibilities of non-linear, divergent thinking i.e. creativity. Though the study did not include individuals with Asperger's or autism, language impairments associated with some forms of the disorder might produce a similar effect.
The experience of a 15-year-old Oklahoma girl diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at age 8 shows that art can also be therapeutic. Before one of her teachers handed her a paintbrush, Amanda had trouble concentrating on her school work and connecting with her peers.
Art helped her focus and express herself, her mother told a reporter. Her paintings are beautiful and received a great deal of positive attention from her parents, teachers and the community at large. "Art was probably the best thing that ever happened to Amanda," her mother said. "It just changed everything about our life."
A new study of 'divergent thinking' i.e. the ability to generate a variety of new solutions to a problem, in people with brain damage hints at why some individuals with autism and dyslexia may be highly creative.
Though this is one of the first scientific studies to address the phenomenon of creativity in people with autism, it adds some scientific support to articles in the popular press that posthumously diagnose autism in long-dead thinkers and artists.
A 2004 book, Autism and Creativity, kicked off this trend by alleging that Einstein, Freud, Wittgenstein and the artist Andy Warhol would all probably merit a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism.
Other researchers have made similar claims about Warhol, the composer Bartok, the poet William Butler Yeats and other luminaries.
Some individuals with autism are also credited with 'visionary art,' created by those who have never received formal training and who may suffer from neuro-psychiatric diseases.
Roger Cardinal, who coined the term 'outsider art' in 1972, discussed six case histories of talented visual artists with varying degrees of autism in a 2009 article. Some of their work is highly lauded and hangs in museums today.
In the midst of this, how do we reconcile the 'insistence on sameness' characteristic of autism with the kind of divergent thinking that defines creativity?
In the new study, researchers showed 40 people with lesions in different regions of the brain pictures of 30 circles drawn on a sheet of paper. They gave each participant five minutes to draw as many pictures as they could of meaningful objects incorporating one of the circles.
Participants with damage to the left hemisphere, which is responsible for language processing, turned out to be more creative than healthy controls, producing more pictures in various designs. By contrast, people with damage to the medial prefrontal cortex, a right hemisphere region involved in planning and decision-making, are less creative than healthy controls.
The researchers speculate that the deterioration of language abilities in people with left hemisphere brain damage opens up possibilities of non-linear, divergent thinking i.e. creativity. Though the study did not include individuals with Asperger's or autism, language impairments associated with some forms of the disorder might produce a similar effect.
The experience of a 15-year-old Oklahoma girl diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at age 8 shows that art can also be therapeutic. Before one of her teachers handed her a paintbrush, Amanda had trouble concentrating on her school work and connecting with her peers.
Art helped her focus and express herself, her mother told a reporter. Her paintings are beautiful and received a great deal of positive attention from her parents, teachers and the community at large. "Art was probably the best thing that ever happened to Amanda," her mother said. "It just changed everything about our life."
Thursday, January 6, 2011
How does Creativity Work
Let's look at a more accurate view of creativity, with its roots in modern science. The watershed year is 1998, when Brenda Milner, Larry Squire, and Eric Kandel published a breakthrough article in the journal Neuron, “Cognitive Neuroscience and the Study of Memory.”
Kandel won the Nobel Prize two years later for his contribution to this work. Since then, neuroscientists have ceased to accept Sperry’s two-sided brain. The new model of the brain is “intelligent memory,” in which analysis and intuition work together in the mind in all modes of thought.
There is no left brain; there is no right. There is only learning and recall, in various combinations, throughout the entire brain.
Neuroscientist Barry Gordon gives an overview of this newer model of the brain in his book Intelligent Memory: Improve the Memory That Makes You Smarter (Viking, 2003), with coauthor Lisa Berger. He portrays the everyday intelligent memory of human beings as the greatest inventory system on earth.
From the moment you’re born, your brain takes things in, breaks them down, and puts them on shelves. As new information comes in, your brain does a search to see how it might fit with other information already stored in your memory.
When it finds a match, the previous memories come off the shelf and combine with the new, and the result is a thought. The breaking down and storing process is analysis. The searching and combining is intuition.
Both are necessary for all kinds of thought. Even a mathematical calculation requires the intuition part, to recall the symbols and formula previously learned in order to apply them to the problem.
When the pieces come off the shelf smoothly, in familiar patterns — such as simple addition you’ve done many times — you don’t even realize it has happened. When lots of different pieces combine into a new pattern, you feel it as a flash of insight, the famous “aha!” moment. But the mental mechanism works the same way in both cases.
Whether it’s working on a familiar formula or a new idea, intelligent memory combines analysis and intuition as learning and recall.
Just as the intelligent memory concept has replaced the old two-sided brain theory in neuroscience, people in groups need to replace brainstorming with methods that reflect more accurately how creative ideas actually form in the mind, and they don’t need to start from scratch.
Once we understand how intelligent memory works, we find several existing techniques that fit. After all, human beings have innovated for eons. If we study how innovation actually happens, we can learn how to do it more reliably.
Kandel won the Nobel Prize two years later for his contribution to this work. Since then, neuroscientists have ceased to accept Sperry’s two-sided brain. The new model of the brain is “intelligent memory,” in which analysis and intuition work together in the mind in all modes of thought.
There is no left brain; there is no right. There is only learning and recall, in various combinations, throughout the entire brain.
Neuroscientist Barry Gordon gives an overview of this newer model of the brain in his book Intelligent Memory: Improve the Memory That Makes You Smarter (Viking, 2003), with coauthor Lisa Berger. He portrays the everyday intelligent memory of human beings as the greatest inventory system on earth.
From the moment you’re born, your brain takes things in, breaks them down, and puts them on shelves. As new information comes in, your brain does a search to see how it might fit with other information already stored in your memory.
When it finds a match, the previous memories come off the shelf and combine with the new, and the result is a thought. The breaking down and storing process is analysis. The searching and combining is intuition.
Both are necessary for all kinds of thought. Even a mathematical calculation requires the intuition part, to recall the symbols and formula previously learned in order to apply them to the problem.
When the pieces come off the shelf smoothly, in familiar patterns — such as simple addition you’ve done many times — you don’t even realize it has happened. When lots of different pieces combine into a new pattern, you feel it as a flash of insight, the famous “aha!” moment. But the mental mechanism works the same way in both cases.
Whether it’s working on a familiar formula or a new idea, intelligent memory combines analysis and intuition as learning and recall.
Just as the intelligent memory concept has replaced the old two-sided brain theory in neuroscience, people in groups need to replace brainstorming with methods that reflect more accurately how creative ideas actually form in the mind, and they don’t need to start from scratch.
Once we understand how intelligent memory works, we find several existing techniques that fit. After all, human beings have innovated for eons. If we study how innovation actually happens, we can learn how to do it more reliably.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Yale Center For Dyslexia & Creativity
Yale Center For Dyslexia & Creativity
A FEW YEARS AGO, SALLY SHAYWITZ and her husband, Bennett, were invited to travel to Davos, Switzerland, to give a presentation at the World Economic Forum, the glitzy annual gathering of the planet’s most influential people.
Bill Gates, CEOs, kings, presidents, and entertainers have attended it. But Sally, who is a co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, and her husband, also an expert on dyslexia, were a little perplexed by the invitation.
“My husband said, ‘What are we going to do there?’” she recalls. But after they gave their lecture on dyslexia, it became quite apparent that many in the audience had a keen personal interest in the topic.
“After [the presentation], we couldn’t walk through the halls without some head of state or CEO pulling us aside and saying, ‘Can I talk to you?’” says Shaywitz, who is the author of Overcoming Dyslexia.
A FEW YEARS AGO, SALLY SHAYWITZ and her husband, Bennett, were invited to travel to Davos, Switzerland, to give a presentation at the World Economic Forum, the glitzy annual gathering of the planet’s most influential people.
Bill Gates, CEOs, kings, presidents, and entertainers have attended it. But Sally, who is a co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, and her husband, also an expert on dyslexia, were a little perplexed by the invitation.
“My husband said, ‘What are we going to do there?’” she recalls. But after they gave their lecture on dyslexia, it became quite apparent that many in the audience had a keen personal interest in the topic.
“After [the presentation], we couldn’t walk through the halls without some head of state or CEO pulling us aside and saying, ‘Can I talk to you?’” says Shaywitz, who is the author of Overcoming Dyslexia.
Friday, May 21, 2010
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