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The puzzles look easy, and mostly they are. Given three words — "trip," "house" and "goal," for example — find a fourth that will complete a compound word with each. A minute or so of mental trolling (housekeeper, goalkeeper, trip?) is all it usually takes.

But who wants to troll?

Let lightning strike. Let the clues suddenly coalesce in the brain — "field!" — as they do so often for young children solving a riddle. As they must have done, for that matter, in the minds of those early humans who outfoxed nature well before the advent of deduction, abstraction or SAT prep courses. Puzzle-solving is such an ancient, universal practice, scholars say, precisely because it depends on creative insight, on the primitive spark that ignited the first campfires.

And now, modern neuroscientists are beginning to tap its source.

In a just completed study, researchers at Northwestern University found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine.

"What we think is happening," said Mark Beeman, a neuroscientist who conducted the study with Karuna Subramaniam, a graduate student, "is that the humor, this positive mood, is lowering the brain's threshold for detecting weaker or more remote connections" to solve puzzles.

This and other recent research suggest that the appeal of puzzles goes far deeper than the dopamine-reward rush of finding a solution. The very idea of doing a crossword or a Sudoku puzzle typically shifts the brain into an open, playful state that is itself a pleasing escape, captivating to people as different as Bill Clinton, a puzzle addict, and the famous amnesiac Henry Molaison, or H.M., whose damaged brain craved crosswords.

And that escape is all the more tantalizing for being incomplete. Unlike the cryptic social and professional mazes of real life, puzzles are reassuringly soluble; but like any serious problem, they require more than mere intellect to crack.

"It's imagination, it's inference, it's guessing; and much of it is happening subconsciously," said Marcel Danesi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto and the author of "The Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life."

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Credit... Craig Frazier

"It's all about you, using your own mind, without any method or schema, to restore order from chaos," Dr. Danesi said. "And once you have, you can sit back and say, 'Hey, the rest of my life may be a disaster, but at least I have a solution.' "

For almost a century scientists have used puzzles to study what they call insight thinking, the leaps of understanding that seem to come out of the blue, without the incremental drudgery of analysis.

In one classic experiment, the German psychologist Karl Duncker presented people with a candle, a box of thumbtacks and the assignment of attaching the candle to a wall. About a quarter of the subjects in some studies thought to tack the box to the wall as a support — some immediately, and others after a few failed efforts to tack wax to drywall.

The creative leap may well be informed by subconscious cues. In another well-known experiment, psychologists challenged people to tie together two cords; the cords hung from the ceiling of a large room, too far apart to be grabbed at the same time.

A small percentage of people solved it without any help, by tying something like a pair of pliers to one cord and swinging it like a pendulum so that it could be caught while they held the other cord. In some experiments researchers gave hints to those who were stumped — for instance, by bumping into one of the strings so that it swung. Many of those who then solved the problem said they had no recollection of the hint, though it very likely registered subconsciously.

All along, researchers debated the definitions of insight and analysis, and some have doubted that the two are any more than sides of the same coin. Yet in an authoritative review of the research, the psychologists Jonathan W. Schooler and Joseph Melcher concluded that the abilities most strongly correlated with insight problem-solving "were not significantly correlated" with solving analytical problems.

Either way, creative problem-solving usually requires both analysis and sudden out-of-the-box insight.

"You really end up toggling between the two, but I think that they are truly different brain states," said Adam Anderson, a psychologist at the University of Toronto.

The payoff of tackling a mental exercise: leaps of understanding that seem to come out of the blue, without the incremental drudgery of analysis. Credit... Craig Frazier

At least, that is what brain-imaging studies are beginning to show. At first, such studies did little more than confirm that the process was happening as expected: brain areas that register reward spiked in activity when people came up with a solution, for instance..

Yet the "Aha!" moment of seeing a solution is only one step along a pathway. In a series of recent studies, Dr. Beeman at Northwestern and John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University, have imaged people's brains as they prepare to tackle a puzzle but before they've seen it. Those whose brains show a particular signature of preparatory activity, one that is strongly correlated with positive moods, turn out to be more likely to solve the puzzles with sudden insight than with trial and error (the clues can be solved either way).

This signature includes strong activation in a brain area called the anterior cingulate cortex. Previous research has found that cells in this area are active when people widen or narrow their attention — say, when they filter out distractions to concentrate on a difficult task, like listening for a voice in a noisy room. In this case of insight puzzle-solving, the brain seems to widen its attention, in effect making itself more open to distraction, to weaker connections..

"At this point we have strong circumstantial evidence that this resting state predicts how you solve problems later on," Dr. Kounios said, "and that it may in fact vary by individual."

The punch line is that a good joke can move the brain toward just this kind of state. In their humor study, Dr. Beeman and Dr. Subramaniam had college students solve word-association puzzles after watching a short video of a stand-up routine by Robin Williams. The students solved more of the puzzles over all, and significantly more by sudden insight, compared with when they'd seen a scary or boring video beforehand.

This diffuse brain state is not only an intellectual one, open to looser connections between words and concepts. In a study published last year, researchers at the University of Toronto found that the visual areas in people in positive moods picked up more background detail, even when they were instructed to block out distracting information during a computer task.

The findings fit with dozens of experiments linking positive moods to better creative problem-solving. "The implication is that positive mood engages this broad, diffuse attentional state that is both perceptual and visual," said Dr. Anderson. "You're not only thinking more broadly, you're literally seeing more. The two systems are working in parallel."

The idea that a distracted brain can be a more insightful one is still a work in progress. So, for that matter, is the notion that puzzle-solving helps the brain in any way to navigate the labyrinth of soured relationships, uncertain career options or hard choices that so often define the world outside.

But at the very least, acing the Saturday crossword or some mind-bending Sudoku suggests that some of the tools for the job are intact. And as any puzzle-head can attest, that buoyant, open state of mind isn't a bad one to try on for size once in a while. Whether you're working a puzzle or not.

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Tracing the Spark of Creative Problem-Solving (Published 2010)

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The puzzles look easy, and mostly they are. Given three words - "trip," "house" and "goal," for example - find a fourth that will complete a compound word with each. A minute or so of mental trolling (housekeeper, goalkeeper, trip?) is all it usually takes. But who wants to troll?

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In the future I will extend my investigation to how the brain solves everyday minor problems and how the brain makes decisions to see if it is similar to how the brain solves problems. The evidence i have gathered can be used to benefit brain researchers and students studying psychology. A they will get a further insight of how the brain works especially how it solves problems. In conclusion the evidence i have gathered does support my hypothesis of the brain uses both sides of the brain to solve problems. As we need both sides to need each other to solve the problem even if one side is more dominant then the other.

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The research and evidence shown support the hypothesis that the brain uses both sides of the brain to solve problems. Potential limitations of the evidence is that the first article/ experiment called Are You a Right-Brain or Left-Brain Thinker? was conducted and published in 1996. It may not be the 100% reliable as it was conducted 20 years ago. Possible sources of error in the experiment 2 is by using neuroimaging they may have miss interpreted the brain scans as only 1 of the conductors of the experiment was still a student.

Ethics
These experiments were ethical as for experiment 2 the college students gave consent and were not forced into watching te humorous video and answering questions for the point of the experiment.

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Evidence source 1- Dew JRD Are you a right brain or left brain thinker? April 1996 published in Quality Progress Magazine / http://asq.org/ee/tech/brain.pdf

Evidence Source 2- Carey BC  Tracing the spark of creative problem solving December 6 2010 published in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/science/07brain.html

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Mark Zeeman- neuroscientist
Karuna Subramaniam- graduate student

Mark Beeman and Karuna Subramaniam did an experiment by using neuroimaging to see what the brain looks like when solving problems. Previous studies only confirmed the very little and only confirmed that the process was happening and when seeing the solution. In recent studies by Beemon and Subramaniam using neuroimaging showed strong correlation with positive moods and those are more likely to solve problems with sudden insight rather than using trial and error. It showed that strong activation in the brain area called the anterior cingulate cortex which is located towards the front of the corpus callosum in the frontal lobe. It shows that cells in the area are active when people widen or narrow their attention to the problem. They also did a study with college students who had to solve problems and puzzles. The students watched a video by Robin Williams before completing the problems. The results showed that students solved more problems by watching a humorous video before as the brain was more open to looser connections between words ad concepts.

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Roger Sperry- Nobel Prize Winner 1981
Ned Hermann- former manegr of management education at General Electric's management Development Institute

The aim of Roger Sperry's experiment was to explore the relationship between the brain's right and left hemisphere. Sperry found that the left hemisphere of the brain functions by processing the information from a problem and the right half functions by recognizing relationships, integrating and synthesizing from the problem. This research shows that both the left and right hemisphere of the brain work together to solve problems. Brain dominance when solving a problem was further enriched by Ned Hermann who developed a brain dominance profile instrument to " help people assess the manner in which they use their brains" Hermann's research suggests that depending on you profession eg teacher or doctor proposes if you are left or right brain orientated. Which

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integrating- indicating the mean valve or total sum of a measure quantity
brain dominance- an individual has a natural preference for processing information on one side of the brain
Hippocampus- is associated with memory, emotions and motivation, but mainly work with memory.
anterior cingulate cortex- located in the frontal lobe that receives inputs from the thalamus and the neocortex, it is involved with emotion, formation, processing, learning and memory.

It is known that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and the right side of the brian controls the left side of the body

The left side of the brain controls logic, linear, fact and language compared to the ride side of the brain which is in charge of creativity, music, arts and feelings.

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In this investigation i will discover how the brain solves problems by using 2 articles/ case studies to help support my hypothesis of which is predicted that the brain solves problems by using both the left and right hemisphere of the brain.

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It is predicted that the brain solves problems by using both the left and right hemisphere of the brain.

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Question: How does the brain solve problems?

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Question: How does the brain solve problems?

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Evelyn Hatzimihalis 11E