Why Being Sleepy and Drunk Are Great for Creativity

By on March 21, 2012 in News 4

HSTCreativity can seem like magic … actually, it’s not. Jonah Lehrer writes in the Wired Science:

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 …

More on Wired Science

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  • http://twitter.com/poptropicanas Poptropica

    I like it this cool.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Great for pro-creativity, too.

    Let’s face it, most people have faces uglier than a virginia ham.  If it weren’t for beer, a lot of family lines would have died out sometime in the High Middle Ages.  The motto above the McGonagle family crest, for instance, reads apt and straight to the point:  “Cerevisia Mihi Leno Est”.

    • Hadrian999

      perhaps that is the origin of the saying “Civilization begins with distillation

  • Haystack

    Creativity perhaps, but I’m not sure about actual productivity.