Shower Creativity Explained!

[Franca Leeson]

Wondering why we get better creative ideas when shaving our pits in the shower than when standing in front of a blank canvas, brush in hand? This may be the answer.

Functional MRIs done at University of British Columbia show how the "daydreaming" brain... that is the brain that is wandering while doing a routine task... is a very busy brain indeed. The problem solving areas of the brain light up at the same time as other so-called "default" areas, and this is not the case when we are actively trying to solve problems. In other words, when we're doing routine tasks our brains may be problem-solving more effectively than when we're actually sitting at desks TRYING to solve problems.

Here is a link to a relevant article in Science Daily. And here is a link to a brief interview between Bob McDonald of CBC's Quirks and Quarks and one of the researchers.

[Marc Hurwitz]

It's an absolutely plausible explanation. There's a lot of other evidence that we solve tough problems below the level of consciousness, i.e., give your brain the space to be creative and it will! Wouldn't surprise me, then, if daydreaming is the best thing we can do (heck, I probably spend half my day doing just that lol). Has anyone read the Dyksterhuis articles on this stuff? It's good reading - Malcolm Gladwell references one article in Blink but there is other interesting ones.

I would just caution that the literature on the 'default' areas of the brain using fMRI doesn't really tell us what the brain is doing. It's something of a controversy right now and, frankly, having read most of the articles on both sides and discussed them a few weeks ago in our lab meeting (for those who don't know me well, I'm in the last year of a PhD in neuroscience at U. Waterloo), I agree with the nay-sayers that probing default areas directly with fMRI isn't telling us anything usable.