The Neuroscience
of Imagination
Aerobic Exercise Stimulates Creative Thinking
Christopher Bergland
Albert Einstein said of the theory of relativity, "I
thought of it while riding my bicycle."
Anyone who exercises regularly knows that your thinking
process changes when you are walking, jogging, biking, swimming, riding the
elliptical trainer, etc. New ideas tend to bubble up
and crystallize when you are inside the aerobic zone. You
are able to connect the dots
and problem solve with a cognitive flexibility
that you don't have when you are sitting at your desk. This is a universal
phenomenon, but one that neuroscientists are just beginning to understand.
Aerobic exercise clears the cobwebs from your mind and
gives you access to insights
that are out of reach when you are sedentary. On the
complete flip side, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (when we are dreaming)
is probably the most creative state of mind we experience daily.
Keith Richards came up with the song 'Satisfaction' in
his sleep. There are thousands of anecdotes
of creative greats having eureka moments when they dream.
Each of us knows from first-hand experience how our imagination streams unrelated
ideas together when we dream.
Regular exercise and sleeping well go
hand-in-hand. Regular exercise allows you to sleep deeper
and dream better. The more regularly you exercise, the
better you will sleep
and the more of a creative powerhouse you will become.
Creativity is the ability to bring together
disparate ideas in new and useful combinations.
What is happening to the electrical, chemical and
architectural environment of our brains
when we exercise that stimulates our imagination and
makes us more creative?
What is the parallel between the waking dream state
induced by exercise and the REM dream state experienced during sleep? Although
these questions remain enigmatic, neuroscientists
have identified that the non-thinking 'default state' of
consciousness is key to creative thinking.
In this entry I will focus on the architectural changes
that occur when you are in a dream-like
default state. I will explore the chemical and electrical
changes that take place during sleep
and aerobic exercise that make us more creative in future Psychology
Today entries.
Many scientists believe that the creative process springs
as much from the subconscious
as it does from a conscious thought process. Most often,
creative solutions are not wrestled
from your mind through sheer force of will. Eureka
moments tend to occur spontaneously,
almost always when the conscious mind is thinking of
something else, or nothing at all.
This is where the daily athletic process is crucial to
creative breakthroughs.
The creative hunter must be intensely interested in
solving a particular problem
while having a laid-back attitude about finding a
solution.
In an essay from 1911 called On Vital Reserves: The
Energies of Men and the Gospel
of Relaxation William James said, "when you are
making your general [creative] resolutions
and deciding on your plans of campaign, keep them out of
the details. When once a decision
is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss
absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a
word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free;
and the service it will do you will be twice as
good." In order to stop over-thinking a problem remember to UNCLAMP and
let ideas that are buried in your unconscious mind surface into the light of
your conscious mind where you can access them intellectually.
Sweat is like WD-40 for your mind-–it lubricates the
rusty hinges of your brain
and makes your thinking more fluid. Exercise allows your
conscious mind to access fresh ideas
that are buried in the subconscious. Every thought that
you have is a unique tapestry of millions
of neurons locking together in a specific pattern-this is
called an engram.
If you do not 'unclamp' during the day, you get locked
into a loop of rut-like thinking.
If for any reason you are unable to do aerobic activity,
focused meditation is also an excellent way to
create a default state.
The urge to force a creative solution by never letting up
is a mistake that many "
Type-A" personality types typically make.
Loosen up! Allow yourself to 'space out' and daydream--doing so will allow the
creative juices to flow more easily. If you do not break apart the engrams
connected to the static thinking of your daily routine, you will not create new
neural networks needed for imagination. The answer will come, if you keep
hunting it down consciously,
but you must also step back and unclamp in
order for ideas in your unconscious mind
to bubble up and reveal their wisdom.
Arthur Koestler once described the experience of finding
the conscious truth
by connecting to the intuitive subconscious when he
explained the 'a-ha' moment by saying:
The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new
insight, is an act of intuition.
Such intuitions
give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning.
In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain,
of which only the beginning and the end are visible above
the surface consciousness.
The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up
at the other end, guided by invisible links.
I like to use a split-brain model of "Down Brain/Up
Brain" to visualize the divide between
the conscious and subconscious minds. Although the entire brain
is always working in concert,
I find that it is useful to imagine your conscious mind
as being housed north of the mid-brain
in your 'Up Brain' of the cerebrum and prefrontal cortex
and that your subconscious mind
is tucked below the mid-brain in the 'Down Brain' of the
cerebellum and brainstem.
These are terms that I came up with as a hypothetical
model to help make abstract concepts of neuroscience easier to
visualize and apply to daily life. It's easy to picture ideas incubating
'down below' before they 'pop up' and reveal themselves
in your concscious mind
because this is how it actually feels and is universally
described.
THE 5 STEPS TO THE
CREATIVE PROCESS
In a landmark study of the creative process Nancy
Andreasan found the same general descriptions
of the creative process repeated again and again. The
common phrases that Dr. Andreasan heard repeatedly were things like: "I
can't force inspiration. Ideas just come to me when I'm not seeking them-when
I'm swimming or running or standing in the shower." "It happens like
magic."
"I can just see things that other people can't, and
I don't know why."
"The muse just sits on my shoulder." "If I
concentrate on finding the answer it never comes,
but if I let my mind just wander, the answer pops
in."
The creative
process moves through five stages.
It begins with preparation--an analytical time when
the basic information or skills are assembled.
It continues on to incubation–a more intuitive and
subconscious time in which you connect the dots in a default state. If you
stick with it through perspiration, this process will eventually lead to revelation–the
eureka experience when you literally feel the tumblers of your mind click
into place and you say: 'A-ha, I have found the
solution!' The creative process ends with production, a time when the
insights are put into a useful form and shared with others.
LESSONS FROM WRITERS ON AEROBIC INDUCED CREATIVITY
Ralph Waldo Emerson said of Thoreau: "The
length of his walk uniformly made the length
of his writing. If shut up in the house, he did not write
at all." I have dedicated an entire chapter
of my next book (Origins of Imagination: Exploring the
Neuroscience of Creative Thinking) to examples of writers throughout history
who have used physical activity as part of their process. Because it is nearly
impossible for neuroscientists to track the link between exercise and
creativity using current brain imaging technologies, I like to look at the
daily habits of creative greats
to find empirical proof of how aerobic exercise
facilitates the creative process.
Below are a few examples of writers who use aerobic
exercise as part of their creative process.
Louisa May Alcott tapped into the power of running in a
way that must have seemed bizarre
in the 1800s. She had an ecstatic connection to running
that seemed embedded deep in her cells. She loved to run through the woods, in
fact, she was an unexpected 'ultra-runner' of her day.
Louisa May Alcott famously said:
Active exercise was my delight from the time when a child
of six I drove my hoop around
the Common without stopping, to the days when I did my
twenty miles in five hours
and went to a party in the evening. I always thought I
must have been a deer or a horse
in some former state, because it was such a joy to run.
No boy could be my friend until I had beaten him in a race, and no girl if
she refused to climb trees, leap fences, and be a tomboy. . .
My wise mother, anxious to give me a strong body to
support a lively brain,
turned me loose in the country and let me run wild.
Henry Miller, who was an avid endurance cyclist,
described the importance of creating a default state to
improve his writing process by saying:
Each man has his own way. After all, most writing is done
away from the typewriter,
away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet,
silent moments, while you're walking or shaving
or playing a game or whatever. . .You're working, your
mind is working on this problem
in the back of your head. So, when you get back to the
machine it's a mere matter of transfer.
Joyce Carol Oates, who is a devoted runner,
has written one of the best descriptions of how running
facilitates her writing process:
Running seems to allow me, ideally, an expanded
consciousness in which I can envision
what I'm writing as a film or a dream. I rarely invent at
the typewriter but recall
what I've experienced. I don't use a word processor but
write in longhand, at considerable length. (Again, I know: writers are crazy.)
By the time I come to type out my writing formally,
I've envisioned it repeatedly. I've never thought of
writing as the mere arrangement of words
on the page but as the attempted embodiment of a vision:
a complex of emotions, raw experience. The effort of memorable art is to evoke
in the reader or spectator emotions appropriate
to that effort. Running is a meditation; more practicably
it allows me to scroll through,
in my mind's eye, the pages I've just written, proofreading
for errors and improvements.
Haruki Murukami published a book What I Talk About
When I Talk About Running in 2009.
When describing his daily writing process Murukami says:
When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am
and work for five to six hours.
In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do
both), then I read a bit and listen
to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this
routine every day without variation.
The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a
form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself
to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such
repetition for so long - six months to a year - requires a good amount of
mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel
is like survival training. Physical strength is as
necessary as artistic sensitivity.
A VIGOROUS INNER AND OUTER LIFE IS KEY TO CREATIVE OUTPUT
Researcher Dean Keith Simonton has compiled strong
evidence that consistent creative output results as much from a vigorous spirit
as it does from creative 'genius'. If you want to foster creativity, you need
to foster a curious, bold, and tenacious personality and mindset.
In every occupation Simonton studied-from composers,
artists, and poets to inventors and scientists, the story is the same: a high
number of creative breakthroughs is directly linked to the quantity
of work produced and a refusal to let failure dampen
enthusiasm or persistence. Regular physical activity reinforces the personality
traits needed to be a creative dynamo across the board.
Renowned creative greats like Pablo Picasso and Leonardo
da Vinci didn't create a constant stream of brilliant works. They had the
stamina and boldness to keep going after failure
and the confidence to admit that most of their
ideas were probably going to be duds
without losing enthusiasm. Thomas Edison once said
"I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that don't
work....genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent
perspiration."
Creative greats have the resilience and drive
to not get beaten down by 'losing'
at a creative challenge. Just like athletes, they have
the tenacity to get up, dust themselves off
and refuse to quit. This mindset of determination is key
to the creative process.
Being creative is almost like throwing spaghetti against
a wall and seeing what sticks.
The more prolific and uninhibited you are about tossing
out new ideas,
the better your odds become of having creative
breakthroughs and being an innovator.
EXERCISE AND THE COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION OF OUR NATION
Part of the work I'm doing politically is to help create
public policies and initiatives
that make physical activity available to people from all
walks of life.
The more Americans we have being physically active and
sleeping well at night the more innovation, trademarks and patents our nation
will have and the more competitive we will be
in the global economy. In my eyes, the effect of inactivity
and obesity in our nation
goes well beyond health-care costs, absenteeism and
a collective depressed mood.
I believe that having more Americans: exercising
regularly, getting outdoors,
living in the 3-dimensional world (not the 2-dimensional
interface of a digital screen),
sleeping well at night and dreaming big will lead to a
revitalization of our collective creative output, our vital energies and our
economic strength.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201202/the-neuroscience-imagination
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