How our thoughts are coded in the brain
Our thoughts and inner mental life is encoded not in the electrical firing of individual brain cells or neurons, but in patterns of electrical activity in networks (or circuits) of neurons. There are many different networks in the brain – each serving a different function – and many different possible patterns of activation within these networks.
Life can be understood as a series of problems – better called ‘challenges’ – that need to be solved. …How to fix w, how to save for x, how to negotiate y, how to meet z. The more intelligent we are, the better we are able to tackle these problems efficiently and effectively. The AI researcher Kurtzweil defined intelligence as:
the ability to optimally use limited resources – including time – to achieve goals.
Intelligence involves applying rules, heuristics (rules of thumb) or strategies to solve problems, and exploring a ‘problem space’ with these rules. For example, finding a wallet may involve applying the rule ‘search one room at a time’.
Insights through trial and error
But new insights and new types of solutions usually also need lots of room for trial and error – for experimentation. Here is an example.
My dad and I were trying to move a very heavy bag of cement down a steep hill and then over a shoulder height wall onto a terrace. Applying our intelligence (!), we knew we’d make the task much easier a) working together, and b) using a wheelbarrow. We shared the load of the bag to get it into the wheelbarrow, and got to the bottom of the hill in no time. But then we were confronted with the problem of how to get it over the wall onto the terrace. We tried lifting it together but it was too heavy. Dad got up onto the terrace, and we tried pushing and pulling. We were experimenting – trial and error wise. But nothing was working. Then I had an ‘ah ha’ moment – a flash of insight. Why not break open the paper covering of the cement, and just scoop it up in handfulls?! That will work. Problem solved. In this example, trial and error gave way to a strategy – a new rule – that worked just fine.
Our daily lives are filled with these kinds of experiences, in which we abandon old behaviours that are no longer efficient or effective and develop new, more appropriate ones. This ability lies at the heart of our general intelligence (link). A recent study, pulibshed on May 13th in the journal Neuron, has investigated exactly what is going on in neural circuits during these ‘insight’ moments that follow from periods of trial and error, in which a better strategy arises to deal with a problem.
Recent research shows what is happening in the brain
“The ability of animals and humans to infer and apply new rules …relies critically on the frontal lobes,” explains Dr. Jeremy K. Seamans from the Brain Research Centre at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute.
In our study, we examined how groups of frontal cortex neurons in rat brains switch from encoding a familiar rule to a completely novel rule that could only be deduced through trial and error.
Rats are intelligent mammals. Like humans they appear to figure out new rules through trial and error when trying to solve problems. Dr Seamans and his colleagues looked at networks of neurons in the rat’s frontal cortex as the rats worked on a task to obtain food that needed a new, ‘insightful’ solution. While it took many attempts of trial and error to figure out the new rule, the researchers found out that the network of brain cells did not change its electrical pattern gradually, but showed an abrupt transition to a new pattern, corresponding to the new, effective behaviour – as if the network had experienced an ‘ah ha’ moment.
In the present problem solving context where the animal had to infer a new rule by accumulating evidence through trial and error, such sudden neural and behavioral transitions may correspond to moments of ’sudden insight’.
Dr. Durstewitz.
Problem solving, sleep & brain plasticity
So insights, that are experienced as ‘break throughs’, have a real basis in the brain that involves a rapid reorganisation of electrical patterns into new, more adaptive, configurations. This is a type of very rapid brain plasticity, and is an essential aspect of applying our intelligence in daily challenges in life.
Interestingly, other research indicates that sleeping on a problem can help with just this kind brain plasticity. Dream (REM) sleep, has been shown to help attain solutions to new problems by stimulating associative networks, allowing the brain to make new and useful associations between unrelated ideas (link).
Reference
Daniel Durstewitz, Nicole M. Vittoz, Stan B. Floresco, Jeremy K. Seamans. Abrupt Transitions between Prefrontal Neural Ensemble States Accompany Behavioral Transitions during Rule Learning. Neuron, 2010; 66 (3): 438-448 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.03.029
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