Rebecca Costa

Using MRI technology, we are now able to observe a new form of problem solving that is ideally suited to large, complex, and dynamic problems. Neuroscientists refer to this process as insight..

Advanced Problem Solving Using Insight 

Every human being has had an encounter with insight, regardless of their education level or their cultural background.  The truth is, the way you know you have used the insightful capabilities of your brain is when you have encountered a problem that is really tough; after you relax and give up on it, suddenly you say "oh I know, this is what we should do!"

The answer has a feeling of dropping out of midair - you can't trace the processes that led up to the solution.

Insight doesn't work in any way that we can identify, other than we know that it is ideally suited for organizing chaos and coming up with an incredibly efficient and accurate solution. What I say to people is, if you had a car and you were driving at 10 miles an hour and you only thought it could go 10 miles an hour, and then one day, you hit the accelerator and it drove 60 miles an hour, would you just go back to driving at 10 miles an hour? That seems inconceivable to me. What I don't understand, is that if every human has had an encounter with insight, why would we go back to driving 10 miles an hour - why wouldn't we harness this, why wouldn't we develop entire departments searching for inner space just as we once did looking for outer space?

If all human beings admit they have had moments of insight, then that means it is biological, not something that was nurtured - it's something that is in nature. Insight represents the way out of our troubles. We cannot solve complex problems using left and right problem solving capabilities, we have to move on to a new way of looking at problems and that is what neuroscientists are now discovering.