The Creative Human Computer

The human brain is often compared to a computer, but it is actually very different. Most computers are largely information-storage devices. Ask an information-seeking question, and the computer goes into a retrieval mode—as does the human brain. However, ask an understanding-seeking question, and the mind has to make up an answer not found in the storage closet of the brain. Computers cannot make up answers. Understanding-seeking questions stimulate the kind of mental activity that creates insight or discovery. As the mind leaps and turns and twists to respond to an understanding-seeking question, special new synapses are activated and the insight experience occurs.

“Insight is the brain at play,” brain researcher Pierce Howard, author of The Owner’s Manual for the Brain, told us recently, “and the brain loves to play.”¹ Discovery—that “Aha!” experience of finding a connection, closing a gap, or completing a pattern—is very rewarding to the mind. So rewarding, in fact, that the mind is constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to repeat the experience. And the more “Aha!”s the mind gets, the hungrier the mind is for them. Finding information is easy and boring; crafting understanding is challenging and exhilarating. The more the mind experiences creative discovery, the more the mind hunts another insight. This pursuit of insight or discovery is what we call “curiosity.” To the mind, curiosity is its own reward. And the by-product of perpetual curiosity is wisdom.