From Wired's Frontal Cortex blog:
Here’s a brain teaser: Your task is to move a single line so that the false arithmetic statement below becomes true.
IV = III + III
Did you get it? In this case, the solution
is rather obvious – you should move the first “I” to the right side of
the “V,” so that the statement now reads: VI = III + III. Not
surprisingly, the vast majority of people (92 percent) quickly solve
this problem, as it requires a standard problem-solving approach in
which only the answer is altered. What’s perhaps a bit more surprising
is that nearly 90 percent of patients with brain damage to the
prefrontal lobes — this leaves them with severe attentional deficits,
unable to control their mental spotlight — are also able to find the
answer.
Here’s a much more challenging equation to fix:
III = III + III
In this case, only 43 percent of normal subjects were able to solve
the problem. Most stared at the Roman numerals for a few minutes and
then surrendered. The patients who couldn’t pay attention, however, had
an 82 percent success rate. What accounts for this bizarre result? Why
does brain damage dramatically improve performance on a hard creative
task? The explanation
is rooted in the unexpected nature of the solution, which involves
moving the vertical matchstick in the plus sign, transforming it into an
equal sign. (The equation is now a simple tautology: III = III = III.)
The reason this puzzle is so difficult, at least for people without
brain damage, has to do with the standard constraints of math problems.
Because we’re not used to thinking about the operator, most people
quickly fix their attention on the roman numerals. But that’s a dead
end. The patients with a severe cognitive deficit, in contrast, can’t
restrict their search. They are forced by their brain injury to consider
a much wider range of possible answers. And this is why they’re nearly
twice as likely to have a breakthrough.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you should take a hammer to your frontal
lobes. Being able to direct the spotlight of attention is a crucial
talent. However, the creative upside of brain damage — the unexpected
benefits of not being able to focus — does reveal something
important about the imagination. Sometimes, it helps to consider
irrelevant information, to eavesdrop on all the stray associations
unfolding in the far reaches of the brain. We are more likely to find
the answer because we have less control over where we look.
This helps explain a new study
led by Mareike Wieth at Albion College. The scientists surveyed 428
undergrads about their circadian habits, asking them whether they were
more productive and alert in the morning or evening. As expected, the
overwhelming majority were night owls, which is why they studiously
avoided 9 a.m. classes. Then, the scientists gave the students a series
of problem-solving tasks. Half of these tasks were creative insight
puzzles, in which the answer arrives suddenly and seemingly out of
nowhere. Here’s a sample insight puzzle:
A man has married 20 women in a small town. All of the women are
still alive and none of them are divorced. The man has broken no laws.
Who is the man? ...MORE
HT
Big Think
