The neuroscience of creative awakening. I live in State College, Pennsylvania, which means that nearly every new acquaintance assumes I work for Penn State. That minor heartburn aside, it’s a good place to be an intellectual since a good share of the people I meet are practicing academics. That small talk is blessedly free of trivialities, and sometimes it even turns to my work on neuroscience and literature.
I started this, got pulled away, and finally came back to finish. Good thing. I might have missed that glorious waterfall image at the end, which sums the whole thing up so well. I’m now going to go finish wrapping gifts, which means brilliant, unrelated insights could happen. I’d better take a notebook and pen -- just in case! ;-)
'But John Kounios, of Drexel University, has conducted brain scans of people while they are solving simple word problems, and he claims that “sudden insight” — that flash of understanding — lights up a unique part of the brain.'
My understanding from my reading in basic brainatronics :) is that this kind of alignment of mental or emotional experience with detectable activity in the brain is pretty common in scans. I wonder, further, if a distinction in the detected activity might be found between the eureka-style flash of cognitive understanding, or solution finding, and the more root meaning of epiphany, as the manifestation of a spirit -- a felt experience of spiritual insight, or even that similar aesthetically produced insight into human experience we have talked about since Joyce. That would be quite interesting.
Indeed, Jay -- this is the subject of neurotheology, which Andrew Newberg explores in The Varieties of Spiritual Experience (named intentionally after William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience).
Perhaps you ought to tell her that I see literature and neuroscience as close companions. Literature is a rich trove of testable hypotheses about the mind and particularly about the imagination! And in some cases, such as Cather's work, literature might well anticipate neuroscience by a century (though I do not pretend to suggest that fine art IS science, just that the close observation that science requires is often echoed in masterful writing craft).
She is a big reader- which I so admire and am grateful for, especially as her studies (and goals) are firmly rooted in the sciences. I'll pass your comment along!
As an interdisciplinary scholar, I see every realm as potentially mine :). I actually have a separate essay on embodied cognition and memory that applies Mark Johnson's The Meaning of the Body to Cather's My Ántonia. Now you've inspired me to adapt it for this series!
Small epiphanies abound in regular life. I see it watching people fit a key piece into a jigsaw puzzle or in myself when I can recall a distant name. Or in writing when I figure out how to
Thanks, David! Yes, small epiphanies are wonderful, too. Cather's characters often grapple with big existential questions, and as someone going through another major life transition, I identify with that. If you've not read Lucy Gayheart, I think you'd enjoy it. The Song of the Lark also has an interesting backstory. Thea Kronborg, the budding artist in that novel, is discovered by the Nathanmeyers, a Jewish family that sponsors her vocal training in Germany. Cather drew many (most?) of her characters from real life prototypes, and that was true of the Nathanmeyers. While attending a seminar in Chicago, I joined a tour of a local cemetery where one of Cather's friends was buried. While we were standing at the grave of interest, a man looked up and pointed in two directions. To the left was a gravestone that said "Nathan." To the right was another gravestone that said "Meyer." One more piece of the biographical puzzle for Cather scholarship and a modest epiphany for all of us that day.
I started this, got pulled away, and finally came back to finish. Good thing. I might have missed that glorious waterfall image at the end, which sums the whole thing up so well. I’m now going to go finish wrapping gifts, which means brilliant, unrelated insights could happen. I’d better take a notebook and pen -- just in case! ;-)
Love this the second time even more than the first! Thank you for the mention of my essay too! xo ~Mary
'But John Kounios, of Drexel University, has conducted brain scans of people while they are solving simple word problems, and he claims that “sudden insight” — that flash of understanding — lights up a unique part of the brain.'
My understanding from my reading in basic brainatronics :) is that this kind of alignment of mental or emotional experience with detectable activity in the brain is pretty common in scans. I wonder, further, if a distinction in the detected activity might be found between the eureka-style flash of cognitive understanding, or solution finding, and the more root meaning of epiphany, as the manifestation of a spirit -- a felt experience of spiritual insight, or even that similar aesthetically produced insight into human experience we have talked about since Joyce. That would be quite interesting.
Indeed, Jay -- this is the subject of neurotheology, which Andrew Newberg explores in The Varieties of Spiritual Experience (named intentionally after William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience).
And I explore that in another piece on Death Comes for the Archbishop: https://joshuadolezal.substack.com/p/can-a-novelist-be-an-intuitive-neuroscientist
Right on the nose! I'll read!
Just shared this with my niece who is studying neuroscience at PITT.
Perhaps you ought to tell her that I see literature and neuroscience as close companions. Literature is a rich trove of testable hypotheses about the mind and particularly about the imagination! And in some cases, such as Cather's work, literature might well anticipate neuroscience by a century (though I do not pretend to suggest that fine art IS science, just that the close observation that science requires is often echoed in masterful writing craft).
She is a big reader- which I so admire and am grateful for, especially as her studies (and goals) are firmly rooted in the sciences. I'll pass your comment along!
Wow! I'm kind of surprised that you're informed about embodied cognition. I thought that was the realm of philosophers and cognitive scientists.
As an interdisciplinary scholar, I see every realm as potentially mine :). I actually have a separate essay on embodied cognition and memory that applies Mark Johnson's The Meaning of the Body to Cather's My Ántonia. Now you've inspired me to adapt it for this series!
I chose my alma mater in part because Mark Johnson worked there...
Thanks Josh for this post.
Small epiphanies abound in regular life. I see it watching people fit a key piece into a jigsaw puzzle or in myself when I can recall a distant name. Or in writing when I figure out how to
start an essay.
We need epiphanies wherever we can find them!
Thanks, David! Yes, small epiphanies are wonderful, too. Cather's characters often grapple with big existential questions, and as someone going through another major life transition, I identify with that. If you've not read Lucy Gayheart, I think you'd enjoy it. The Song of the Lark also has an interesting backstory. Thea Kronborg, the budding artist in that novel, is discovered by the Nathanmeyers, a Jewish family that sponsors her vocal training in Germany. Cather drew many (most?) of her characters from real life prototypes, and that was true of the Nathanmeyers. While attending a seminar in Chicago, I joined a tour of a local cemetery where one of Cather's friends was buried. While we were standing at the grave of interest, a man looked up and pointed in two directions. To the left was a gravestone that said "Nathan." To the right was another gravestone that said "Meyer." One more piece of the biographical puzzle for Cather scholarship and a modest epiphany for all of us that day.