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That burst is the brain briefly damping its own visual input, almost looking away from the problem, right before the answer surfaces. The aha is preceded by a blink.
The network behind this is the default mode network, which comes online when you stop working a problem: when you walk, shower, stare at the ceiling, or nap. It was long called the brain's idle state, but it is the brain's great connector, reaching across everything you know and wiring distant, unrelated ideas to each other.
Researchers have disrupted that network directly, with electrodes inside the brain. Originality dropped while the rest of thinking carried on untouched. The competent-but-obvious ideas kept coming, and the new ones stopped.
Why would the brain look away before an insight?
Mark Beeman and John Kounios found in EEG studies of word puzzles that people solving problems by insight showed a burst of alpha activity over the visual cortex just before the answer. Alpha waves are associated with reduced visual processing. Right after that burst, they saw a short spike of gamma activity in the right anterior temporal lobe, around the moment the solution reached awareness.
Why was the default mode network called idle?
Neurologist Marcus Raichle noticed around 2001 that certain brain regions were more active at rest than during demanding tasks. The brain uses about a fifth of the body's energy, and task-related increases in that use are small. Those findings led Raichle and others to treat the resting brain as constantly busy rather than idle.
Does walking really boost creative thinking?
A 2014 Stanford study by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz tested people on creative tasks while sitting and while walking. Walking raised creative output on a divergent-thinking test by an average of about 60 percent. The effect held on a treadmill facing a blank wall as well as outdoors.
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