Many teachers report being driven by the ‘lightbulb’ moments they see their students experience — the moment when understanding dawns, the problem is solved, all the pieces click into place. A 2018 study(1) attempted to map what happens in the brain when one of these moments occurs and the findings were fascinating.
The researchers were building on some existing work that indicated higher-order cognitive processes were linked to the Aha! moment. One specific process is something called semantic retrieval, which is the process of retrieving information based on its meaning and context, rather than just matching keywords. In other words, people experiencing Aha! moments were drawing on and synthesizing their background knowledge of a variety of contexts and experiences. As a non-scientist, my understanding of this is that a person is sifting through everything they know about the problem they are working on, looking for connections and patterns, trying and discarding possible solutions as they go. What the researchers wanted to understand was the neurological mechanism involved in the Aha! moment — what happened when everything clicked and they solved the problem.
The way researchers tested for the Aha! moment is important because many tests of this type measure divergent thinking. A test of this type might be something like, “list all the possible uses for a brick.” It’s designed to see how far out of the box someone can go, how far their thinking diverges from the standard uses for a brick. For this study, researchers wanted the test to measure divergent and convergent thinking — something that had to be picked apart and put back together again.
The test the researchers used was a word association problem. Subjects were given three words, HOUSE-BARK-APPLE, and instructed to come up with a fourth word that linked all the words together (in this case, TREE). As participants worked the tasks, the researchers used ultra fast MRI imaging to record brain activity. They categorized solutions as low-insight (meaning the subject didn’t feel confident in their solution) and high-insight (meaning they felt highly confident in their solution). Subjects pressed a button when they felt they had the right answer. In essence, they were documenting the moment the penny dropped. If the subject was guessing or unsure, that would show up in the areas of the brain activated at that time.
Here’s the MRI result for the two types of responses:
The analysis of this is highly technical, but the gist of it is this:
- The letters NAcc on the MRI stand for the Nucleus Accumbens. In the high-insight brain, it’s lit up like a candle. In the low-insight brain, it’s not visible. Researchers believe the activation of the NAcc shows the Aha! moment. (2)
- Researchers noted a subjective feeling that accompanied the Aha! moment — a sense of relief, ease, joy, and confidence. This is supported by the activation of dopamine pathways — that’s the VTA/SN on the brain scans. Notice that they are brightly lit in the high insight brain and just a speck in the low insight brain. The conclusion here is that the Aha! moment gives the brain a pleasurable hit of dopamine for solving the problem which teaches the subject that solving problems is a desirable thing. (3)
- Also active were areas of the brain associated with semantic memory retrieval; literally a picture of the subject sifting through their own knowledge and possible solutions.
- They further noted that the hippocampus was also very active, indicating that the brain was consolidating memory — learning — as a result of the Aha! moment. In the low-insight brain, the caudate — a part of the brain also involved in memory — is a dim spot, likely indicating that a memory of this task won’t be retained for long.
The big takeaway? Problem solving activates multiple, wide-ranging brain regions, feels good to the brain, and consolidates learning.
I think the applications to education are obvious, but in case they aren’t, I’ll connect some dots. The Aha! moment that motivates a lot of teachers to continue teaching is also what motivates kids to keep learning. Kids asked to do tasks with higher-order thinking will use more of their brains to complete the task. As kids solve problems or find connections between pieces of instruction, their brains will reward them and better consolidate their learning to be more available for further problem solving. Intrinsic reward is no small thing: breakthroughs across multiple fields have been driven by intrinsic motivations. Some of our most basic human behaviors are driven by intrinsic motivation stemming from solving a problem.(4) And let’s not miss the flip side: tasks that are rote in nature, requiring only Remembering or Understanding to complete, are not sufficient to activate background knowledge across brain regions or provide intrinsic reinforcement and consolidation of the learning.(5)
The more engaging and appropriately challenging the work is, the more and better kids will learn, and the longer they will retain it.
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(1) Tik M, Sladky R, Luft CDB, Willinger D, Hoffmann A, Banissy MJ, Bhattacharya J, Windischberger C. Ultra-high-field fMRI insights on insight: Neural correlates of the Aha!-moment. Hum Brain Mapp. 2018 Aug;39(8):3241-3252. doi: 10.1002/hbm.24073. Epub 2018 Apr 17. PMID: 29665228; PMCID: PMC6055807.
(2) Me breaking this down is a great example of an NAcc firing on all cylinders — the problem to be solved was how to make an extremely technical analysis of brain activity relatable to non-scientists and connect it to education. I had to access what I know about science and language and my audience and my field to come up with a solution. Thanks to some dopamine, I am feeling very, very good right now.
(3)A study reported in Psychology Today found that in some people, this sense of joy, relief, and ease was highly pronounced. These people get a much bigger dopamine hit when they figure stuff out — much bigger. Huge.
(4) Both walking and talking are means to solve problems when children are very small (How do I get to that thing? How do I communicate what I need?) and the brain reinforces their learning with dopamine when the problem is solved.
(5) I think it might be worth considering two things: one, that constant, low-cognitive demand work may be so uninteresting and unrewarding that it gives rise to a sense of pointlessness in students. Why continue to show up to school when what they are asked to do is so lacking? And, two: repeated failure can reinforce the opposite effect; problem solving becomes stressful and fraught and the student stops trying. It’s critically important that kids get scaffolded support for their thinking and problem-solving to enable them to get to those Aha! moments.