Underwater thinking, the best solution?

Concentrating too much over an idea in our mind is usually a mistake: almost everybody have already passed through this neuron burning process without arriving to a solution. A study by the Universities of London and Vienna aims to reinforce this idea but in the opposite direction. The scientific team concluded that excessive concentration blocks the mind and that the most creative and original ideas erupt when they are less looked after: and, to make it short, they say that one of the most suitable places is under the shower.

Remember: Woody Allen confessed reaching the peaks of inspiration under his relaxing shower. Archimedes used to say he thought best in the bath. The study was published in the British science journal Plus One.

The key would be to abstract ourselves from our environment for the ideas to be formed to organize and subconscious level. Amid this “think about nothing”, while one pass soap through the body, or just let the water run, the light bulb that we saw in so many drawings representing surprising advent of the most brilliant and transcendent ideas.

shower and thinking

The investigation required the participation of 21 volunteers that were provided for their conduct while electroencephalograms controlled them solving some problems.

At that moment it became clear how the impossibility of finding solutions was because “by inference” the work of the mind entering plateaus of zero creativity, inspiration did not appear.

“Focusing on the problem is important, but focus is too bad because it can block. The creative thinking related ideas that have no apparent connection between them, “explains Joydeep Bhattacharya, from the University of London.

The electroencephalograms revealed that during this state of mental block, there is a large gamma wave activity in the posterior region of the brain.

These waves are associated with selective conscious attention, which limits the ability to analyze a problem from different perspectives. If we can relax the gamma waves and release alpha waves (associated with states of relaxation) in other regions of the brain, the solutions come present.