Eric Kandel: Creativity, Your Brain, and the Aha! Moment | Big Think
Eric Kandel: Creativity, Your Brain, and the Aha! Moment
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Dr. Eric Kandel describes the “aha phenomenon” and speculates on ways that humans and groups can think more creatively.
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ERIC KANDEL:
Dr. Eric Kandel is University Professor and Fred Kavli Professor and Director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His most recent book is The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present.
Kandel’s research has shown that learning produces changes in behavior by modifying the strength of connections between nerve cells, rather than by altering the brain’s basic circuitry. He went on to determine the biochemical changes that accompany memory formation, showing that short-term memory involves a functional modulation of the synapses while long-term memory requires the activation of genes and the synthesis of proteins to grow new synaptic connections. For this work, the Austrian-born Kandel was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Eric Kandel: Leonardo, for one, spent a fair amount of time dissecting human cadavers because he wanted to know how the various bones related to one each other and how the muscles related to the bones. So he wanted to have a realistic understanding of the human anatomy because he was depicting real live people sitting, gesturing, walking, and he wanted to get this as absolutely correct as possible.
In order to understand how the body functions, we need to know something about the anatomy of the body, it’s sort of obvious.The more we want to depict the mind, the more it helps to understand the mind, and one way to understand the mind is to understanding the brain. So it is conceivable that as we get deeper and deeper insights into the mind, artists will get ideas about how combinations of stimuli affect, for example, emotional states that will allow them to depict those emotional states better.
But in addition, we’re beginning to get in very, very primitive terms, some insights into the nature of creativity. Hughling Jackson, the great neurologist in the 19th century, thought that the left hemisphere is involved in language. We know this is true. And the left hemisphere is primarily involved in logical processes, calculation, mathematics, rational thinking. The right hemisphere, he thought, is more involved with musicality, which is true. The sing-song in my language comes from the right hemisphere, the grammar and the articulation comes from my left hemisphere. Okay? So he thought that the right hemisphere is more involved in musicality in, you know, synthesis, putting things together and an aspect of creativity. And he felt that the two hemispheres inhibit one another. So if you have lesions of the left hemisphere, that removes the inhibitory constraint on the right hemisphere and frees up certain processes. And he found that certain kids that develop later in life, let’s say, later in their teens, aphasia, a language difficulty; it freed up in them a musicality which they didn’t have before.
People have returned to that more recently in the analysis of a dementia called Frontotemporal Dementia. Frontotemporal Dementia is a dementia somewhat similar to Alzheimer’s disease, it actually begins earlier, that primarily affects the temporal lobe of the brain and the front lobe of the brain. If it’s only expressed on the left side, people with Frontotemporal Dementia begin to show creativity that they’ve never shown before. So if you were painting before, you might start, if you develop Frontotemporal Dementia on the left side, to use colors that you’ve never used before to try forms that you’ve never used before. If you never painted before, you might take up painting for the first time. So this is really quite unusual.
There are also a group of people who have studied aspects of creativity. I can give you a problem that can be solved in one of two ways, systematically working your way through it or putting it together, take a guess, an Aha Phenomenon. And they found that when people do it in a sort of creative way, the Aha Phenomenon, there is a particular area in the right side of the brain that lights up. And they show this not only with imaging, but also with electrophysiological recording…
Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/where-does-creativity-come-from
@bigthink
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
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@balzache
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
Can someone please summarize this for me because it went totally over my fucking head
@PeterZeeke
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
"…Taste the spoon! He says I dont wanna taste the soup. He said taste the soup, he said I dont wanna taste the soup. He says would you you just taste the soup, so he says ok I'll taste the soup… wheres da spoon?"
@Miskah1536
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
What six flags you guys talking abouut? This genius man is a Nobel price winner in Medicine!! So grateful for his work on the „process of learning and memory“.Been reading his book „What is the human“ lately, beautifully written and explained 🤗
@davidwilmothall
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
If this is "Old Jews Telling Jokes" it's a slow burn.
@workforcetrust
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
Simple minds laugh about simple things 😉
@9teoo
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
thanks God you created geniouses
@kingnorfolk1604
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
what pisses me of is that academic people try to categorize or explain creativity… as a creative person i know im unstable unpredictable and impulsive also thinking outside the box seems to be looked down upon which is rather strange… i mean personally i may be ever so lightly autistic as i can created an engine in my head and test run it…
@Xamarin491
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
For a second I thought this was the guy from the six flags commercials
@bigjesse1985
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
So does this mean that with more study into the creative processes within the brain, alongside understanding of stimuli and how to generate certain responses, there could be a formula to creating music/arts/literature that invoke particular moods and responses? What a sad world that would be… 🙁
@eligio7907
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
Green isn't creative Let's agree never to think creatively
@rainwet
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
You Sir! Deserve that wonderful Bow – TIe
@406messi
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
NICE KANDEL
@sydniusalminia5364
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
I thought I was a reasonably smart guy, but I barely grasped anything he just talked about.
@angelakovacs6655
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
It was very useful and interesting.
Thank you for sharing.
@tobi90569
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
applause.gif
@RHCPfan458
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
Did anybody else think it was Larry David in the thumbnail?
@MightyZorn79
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
My understanding of creativity is repetition, repetition, repetition. To Master the left brain technical aspects of a particular art through repetition until conscious left brain thought can be turn off and the practitioner can "go into the zone". A euphoric autopilot state of mind.
@doxistavrou6660
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
not all old people!
@MrHALLA2009
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
So based on what he is saying about creativity being enhanced by left-brain or left-frontal brain damage or disease…. Having worked in Advertising for years, does this finally prove that the Creative Dept is full of brain-damaged people?? Ha!
@kloud..
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
mind and brain r 2 different things that are treated alike. they r not the same thing.
@JQuistis
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
I invite you to think creatively of a way to solve the problem without using force. You might even experience an Aha! moment!
@IsJackAwesome
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
I have reason it believe tat the only way for this specimen is a bullet in the brain
@learngoodable
February 21, 2026 at 1:11 am
The dude from six flags?
Comments are closed.