Researchers Map Brain's Inspiration Point

The researchers were concentrating on that area because previous studies have linked it to complex language skills "when you need to tie together things that are distantly related," Jung-Beeman says. "That's exactly what an insight is. It's tying together information that people already know, but they don't recognize how they are related until that key moment."

That result was reinforced in the second experiment when an electroencephalogram (EEG) detected high frequency brain waves, normally associated with complex cognitive processing, in the same area of the brain.

The results show that some form of different neural activity is taking place during insight, but that's not likely to be the entire story, according to the researchers. This is a very new field, and it has eluded researchers for many years, so there are probably many other things going on in addition to one area of the brain lighting up.

But it's a strong start, according to other scientists who have looked at the work. Philip Johnson-Laird, professor of psychology at Princeton University, describes it as "one of the most original studies of insight that I have ever seen."

Archimedes Principal

One of the problems confronting researchers has been pretty basic. How do you know when you've had a Eureka moment?

They looked to the past, and the character who coined the phrase, for an answer. Legend has it that Archimedes was just about to step into his bath when the light went off over his head. He had been ordered by his king, Hiero, to find out if his crown was pure gold without destroying it.

Archimedes noticed that the water rose in his bath as he stepped in, and the insight struck. The displacement of the water was directly related to the volume of whatever was put into the tub, even his foot, so all he had to do was submerge the crown in water to determine its purity.