The elusive ‘Ah-Ha’ moment accounts for 60% of all problem-solving

November 11, 2010

Research in the lab by Mark Beeman at Northwestern University, the founding fathers of neuroscience research into insight, shows that we tend to solve about 60% of problems with the 'Ah-Ha' phenomenon. And this is predicted to rise when people come out of the lab into the real world.

Beeman has found that people experiencing insights have an intriguing brain signal just before the insight occurs. The brain in some regions goes quiet, like a car going into idle. According to Beeman, “about a second and a half before people solved the problem with insight they had this sudden and prolonged increase in alpha band activity over the right occipital lobe (the region that processes visual information coming into the brain).” The alpha activity disappeared exactly at the moment of insight. So if we want to solve tough problems, it’s useful to tackle things when our mind is quiet, with less overall activation, like after a siesta or moment of meditation.