神經世界: 如何獲得你的"靈光一刻"

Why is it that some people rack their brains for new ideas, only to come up empty─while others seem to shake them almost effortlessly out of their sleeves?

爲什麼有些人爲了獲得新想法絞盡腦汁，頭腦中卻仍是空空如也，而有些人看起來幾乎不費吹灰之力就能生出奇思妙想？

Whether creativity is an innate gift or a cognitive process that anyone can jump-start is a question so intriguing that researchers keep studying it from different angles and discovering new and surprising techniques.

靈感是這樣降臨的創造力究竟是與生俱來的天賦還是任何人都能啓動的一個認知過程？這個問題激發了研究人員的興趣，他們從各個角度對此進行了研究，結果發現了全新的、出人意料的新技巧。

Several recent studies suggest that the best route to an 'aha moment' involves stepping away from the grindstone─whether it's taking a daydream break, belting back a drink or two or simply gazing at something green.

新近的幾項研究表明，想要獲得“靈光一閃的瞬間”，最佳途徑包括從枯燥無味的日常生活中抽身出來──不論你是做白日夢歇一歇、下班回來後小酌一兩杯還是光盯着綠色的東西看什麼都不幹。

Of course, personality can make a difference. People who rate high in openness to new experiences in personality tests also may be more distractible and curious, according to a 2010 study in Creativity Research Journal. Among 158 college students, those who were less inhibited and more receptive to lots of stimuli also were able to generate more ideas than others, says the study by British researchers.

當然，人們迥異的性格會使情況變得截然不同。2010年發表在《創造力研究期刊》(Creativity Research Journal)上的一項研究表明，那些在性格測試中對新生事物的開放度上得分高的人可能也會有更大的好奇心，也更易分心。這項由英國工作人員進行的研究還表明，在158名大學生中，那些不那麼拘謹、更易接受衆多刺激的學生也會比其他人產生更多的想法。

But personality isn't the only path to inspiration, researchers say. Walking away from a problem to do simple, routine tasks, and letting the mind wander in the process, can spark creative new connections or approaches to solving dilemmas, says a 2012 study in Psychological Science. That helps explain why 'a lot of great ideas occur at transition times,' when people are waking up or falling asleep, bathing, showering or jogging, says Jennifer Wiley, a psychology professor at University of Illinois at Chicago and lead author of a 2012 research summary in Current Directions in Psychological Science.

但研究人員也表示，性格並非是通向靈感的唯一途徑。2012年發表在《心理科學》(Psychological Science)期刊上的一項研究表明，從問題中抽身出來、去做一些簡單的日常工作，讓思緒在此過程中自由遊蕩，這樣可以使人們在解決困境時產生一些具有創造力的新聯想、新思路。《最新心理科學指南》(Current Directions in Psychological Science)2012年一項研究綜述的首席作者、伊利諾大學芝加哥分校(University of Illinois at Chicago)心理學教授詹妮弗•威利(Jennifer Wiley)稱，這也就解釋了爲什麼“許多偉大的想法都誕生在輾轉過渡期”，像人們醒來或睡去、泡澡淋浴或慢跑的時刻。

For years, Amy Baxter, a physician and pain researcher, looked for ways to use cold to relieve children's pain from vaccination shots. But her light bulb moment didn't come until she was driving home from work, tired after an all-night shift in the emergency room.

內科醫生、疼痛研究者艾米•巴克斯特(Amy Baxter)多年來都在尋找使用冷凍來緩解兒童疫苗接種疼痛感的方法。但她的靈光一刻遲遲沒有出現，直到有一次下了急診室夜班，疲憊不堪的巴克斯特駕車回家，途中她突然開竅了。

The steering wheel on her car was vibrating because the tires were poorly aligned, and she noticed as she pulled into her driveway that the vibration had made her hands numb. With help from her husband Louis, she made the connection: Combining vibration and cold might be enough to ease the pain of a shot. 'After an overnight shift, your mind is expansive,' Dr. Baxter says. 'Connections are made that wouldn't otherwise happen.'

由於四個車輪排列不齊，巴克斯特的汽車方向盤一直在擺動震顫，她注意到，當她將車駛進自己的車道時，這種震顫感令她雙手發麻。在丈夫路易斯(Louis)的幫助下，巴克斯特產生了這樣一種聯想：將震顫和冷凍結合起來使用可能會消除打針時的疼痛感。巴克斯特醫生說，“在上了一整夜的班後，你的思路拓展了。這些聯想不會在其他情況下產生。”

She applied a vibrating massager and a bag of frozen peas to the arm of her 7-year-old son Max, then rolled over his skin a small metal wheel used by neurologists to test sensitivity. Max felt nothing. That discovery sparked the development of 'Buzzy,' a toylike vibrating bee fitted with a tiny ice pack. With help from a 2008 federal grant, she produced the device and began marketing it online. Buzzy is now being used in 500 hospitals to ease patients' pain from injections and infusions, says Dr. Baxter, chief executive of MMJ Labs, Atlanta.

巴克斯特先將振動按摩器和一包冷凍青豆在她7歲兒子馬克斯(Max)的手臂上進行試用，然後她將神經病學家專用的小金屬輪在兒子的皮膚上滾動以檢測靈敏度。馬克斯對此毫無感覺。這個發現促成了"Buzzy"的研發，這是一種裝有一個小冰袋、形似震動蜜蜂玩具的物件。在2008年獲得聯邦政府的資金支持後，巴克斯特生產了這種設備並開始在網上進行推廣銷售。亞特蘭大MMJ實驗室首席執行長巴克斯特醫生說，目前，有500家醫院都在使用Buzzy以消除患者在注射和輸液時的疼痛感。

Dr. Baxter's groggy, wee-hour epiphany wasn't a fluke. Students in a 2011 study solved more problems requiring fresh new insights when they tackled them at off-peak times of day─in the evening for morning people, and in the morning for night owls, says the study, published in Thinking & Reasoning.

巴克斯特醫生在凌晨疲憊之時的頓悟並非僥倖。2011年發表在《思考與推理》(Thinking & Reasoning)雜誌上的一項研究指出，更多的學生往往在一天的低潮期中解決了更多需要全新視角才能解決的問題。早起人的低潮期在晚上，夜貓子的低潮期則在早上。

Such advice runs counter to the conventional wisdom that solving problems requires focusing a person's attention and blocking out distractions. 'When you are trying hard to focus your attention, you are going to miss new ideas,' Dr. Wiley says.

這樣的建議與“解決問題需要聚精會神、驅散干擾、摒除雜念”的傳統觀點背道而馳。威利博士說，“當你努力試着集中精神的時候，你將錯過那些新想法。”

Viewing the color green may help make those ideas more apparent, according to research published last year in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. When students were given creativity tests, those whose test-cover pages had a green background gave more creative answers than those whose pages were white, blue, red or gray. Many see green as a symbol of fertility, growth and renewal, triggering the positive mood and striving for improvement that fosters creativity, says the study, led by researchers at University of Munich in Germany. (A 2009 study linked the color blue to increased creativity, but researchers on the latest study explained the disagreement by saying they controlled their results more carefully for the lightness and vividness of the colors used.)

《個性與社會心理學通報》(Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)去年發表的一項研究顯示，看看綠色的東西可能會有助於讓那些新想法變得更明晰。當學生們在參加創造力測驗時，與那些試卷封面爲白色、藍色、紅色或灰色的同學相比，那些分到綠色封面的同學給出的答案更具創造性。該研究稱，許多人將綠色視爲孕育、生長和重生的象徵，這激發了人的積極情緒、使其不斷追尋進步，而這些都促進、強化了創造力。該項研究是由德國慕尼黑大學(University of Munich)的研究人員帶頭完成的。(2009年曾有一項研究表明：藍色與增強創造力息息相關。但執行最新研究的工作人員在解釋這兩個不同的結論時說，考慮到所用顏色的深淺和鮮明度，他們在研究結果的控制上更爲審慎了。)

Mind-wandering, often seen as daydreaming, allows the brain to incubate new approaches to familiar problems, serving 'as a foundation for creative inspiration,' says the 2012 study in Psychological Science. In a test of creativity, researchers asked 145 students to think of as many unusual uses as possible for such common items as a brick or toothpick, then divided them randomly into four groups. Three groups were given a 12-minute break with different assignments; a fourth group kept working. When all the students tackled the same problems a second time, those who had done a simple, boring task during a break had more creative ideas than those who were assigned a tough cognitive puzzle, those who rested, or those who didn't take a break, says the study, co-authored by Jonathan Schooler, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

2012年發表在《心理科學》期刊上的那項研究還表明，常常被人們視作白日夢的走神行爲能讓大腦針對老問題醞釀出新辦法，它是“創造性靈感的基石”。在一項創造力測試中，研究人員要求145名學生針對像磚頭、牙籤這樣的常見物品想出儘可能多的不同尋常的用法，然後又將學生們隨機分成了四組。其中有三組人被分配了不同的任務並都獲得了12分鐘的休息，而第四組人卻一直在不停歇地工作。該研究發現，當所有學生在第二次被要求解決完全相同的問題時，那組在休息時被分配了簡單枯燥任務的學生萌生了更多創造性的想法，他們勝過了在休息時被分配了一項艱深難題的一組、單純休息的一組或是完全沒有休息的一組。加州大學聖芭芭拉分校(University of California at Santa Barbara)心理學教授喬納森•斯庫勒(Jonathan Schooler)是這項研究的合着者。

Another tactic: Build time for mind wandering into daily routines, breaking away from tasks requiring concentration to take a walk or run, look out a window or do some relaxing, routine physical task.

另一種方法：安排專門的時間走神，並將其納入日常生活中。從需要聚精會神的工作任務中抽身出來去散散步或者跑跑步、看看窗外或者做一些放鬆身體的常規性活動。

Atlanta ad executive John Stapleton had been trying for three weeks to come up with advertising ideas for a client, the Costa Rica Tourism Board, to encourage people to visit the Central American nation. But it wasn't until he got out of his Atlanta office, traveled to the Costa Rican rain forest (at the Tourism Board's invitation) and relaxed on his patio at a resort that he got the idea of making an ad based on something other than words. A storm was approaching, and 'all the howler monkeys started woofing like dogs, and the rain forest came to life,' he says.

亞特蘭大廣告公司高管約翰•斯特普爾頓(John Stapleton)三週來一直在試着爲客戶哥斯達黎加旅遊局(Costa Rica Tourism Board)構思廣告創意，以鼓勵人們到這個中美洲國家旅遊。但斯特普爾頓一直沒什麼想法，直到他離開亞特蘭大辦公室，前往哥斯達黎加雨林旅遊(在旅遊局的邀請之下)。在一家度假酒店的露臺上休息時，他突然想到可以用文字之外的什麼東西爲基礎作一則廣告。當時，一場暴風雨即將來臨。他描述道，“吼猴開始像狗那般低吠，雨林就這樣走進了你的生命。”

He and his colleagues developed an iPad app enabling users to create their own jungle music, syncing the sounds of howling monkeys, frogs, rain, fish and streams into a rhythmic symphony, free for children and potential adult visitors to download as a window into Costa Rica's biodiversity.

斯特普爾頓和同事研發了一款iPad應用程序，用戶可以用它來創造自己的叢林音樂，並將吼猴、蛙鳴、雨落、游魚和溪流的各種聲音同步、編成一曲有節奏的交響樂。這款應用程序作爲人們瞭解哥斯達黎加生物多樣性的一個窗口。兒童和潛在成人遊客都可免費下載。

To hatch the idea of illustrating biodiversity via music, 'a key factor was to get away from juggling accounts and being constantly distracted, jumping from one task to the next,' says Mr. Stapleton, chief creative director at the ad agency 22squared.

22squared廣告公司的創意總監斯特普爾頓說，想要策劃出這個用音樂展現生物多樣性的想法，“一個關鍵因素是要從應接不暇的客戶和持續不斷的紛擾中逃離出來，要從一項任務跳轉到下一個。”

Moderate drinking can also relax inhibitions in a way that seems to let the mind range across a wider set of possible connections. It can also help a person notice environmental cues or changes that a sober brain would block out, Dr. Wiley says. In a 2012 study at University of Illinois at Chicago, students who drank enough to raise their blood-alcohol level to 0.075 performed better on tests of insight than sober students. Other research suggests watching funny videos can spark the positive moods linked to higher creativity.

適量小酌也能在一定程度上令壓抑許久的身心得到放鬆，而這似乎又能讓人的思維跨至一個更廣泛的聯想範圍。威利博士說，它還有助於讓人察覺到那些清醒者可能忽略掉的環境提示或改變。伊利諾大學芝加哥分校2012年進行的一項研究表明，那些飲了足夠的酒、使血液中酒精含量升至0.075%的學生比頭腦清醒的學生在洞察力測試中表現更爲出色。其他的研究則表明，觀看趣味視頻能夠激發與強化創造力相關的積極情緒。

Priming the mind with a wide range of experiences and input also helps. Tor Myhren, an ad executive credited with many successful campaigns including the ETrade talking baby, says he uses 'massive creative stimulus followed by total solitary confinement' to start ideas flowing. Anticipating a period of hard work recently, he read 'Wired' magazine cover to cover, then went to see 'Django Unchained,' says Mr. Myhren, president and chief creative officer of Grey New York. 'When I set my brain up properly for it, when I've fed my brain properly, I can do it.'

用各種不同的經歷和信息填充大腦也有助於激發人的創造力。曾親手打造出包括ETrade“說話的寶寶”在內的衆多知名活動的廣告公司高管托爾•邁倫(Tor Myhren)稱，他就使用了“大量創造性的刺激、緊接着是完全封閉式獨處”的方式來激活思維。邁倫預計最近將着手一段相當繁重的工作，所以他就先一字不落地讀完了《連線》(Wired)雜誌，接着又觀看了電影《被解放的迪亞戈》(Django Unchained)。現爲Grey New York公司總裁兼首席創意官的邁倫說，“當我用正確的信息餵飽了腦子，當我的大腦專爲工作開啓時，我就能做好了。”

He wrote some of the talking-baby scripts while working alone late at night in his office, sipping a little Oban whiskey and listening to Radiohead on his iPod, he says. For him, 'an idea isn't just a lightning-bolt thing. I have to work at it.'

邁倫還稱，他正是獨自一人在深夜的辦公室裏寫出了“講話的寶寶”的部分腳本。當時他的工作狀態是一邊啜飲歐本(Oban)威士忌、一邊用iPod聽電臺司令(Radiohead)的歌。對邁倫而言，“一個想法的誕生不單單是件靈光一閃的事兒，我必須得真刀實槍地爲之努力工作。”

Entrepreneurial people, for example, 'have ideas about everything all the time,' says Jonathan Kaplan, inventor of the Flip pocket camcorder, an idea that sparked a boom in personal videos a few years ago. 'We always think we're right and always think it's possible to do them,' says Mr. Kaplan, who is now chief executive of a company based on his latest idea, The Melt, San Francisco, a high-tech restaurant chain offering healthy comfort food.

而對於創業的人，用Flip口袋攝像機發明者喬納森•卡普蘭(Jonathan Kaplan)的話來說，則“一直都對萬事萬物充滿了各種想法”。卡普蘭的這一發明曾在幾年前引發了個人視頻的熱潮。他還說，“我們總認爲自己是對的，也總覺得有可能會實現自己的這些想法。”卡普蘭現在舊金山一家名爲The Melt的高科技連鎖餐廳擔任首席執行長，該餐廳專爲顧客提供健康的安慰食物，它的誕生也是基於卡普蘭的最新創意。

Straying from your field of expertise can help, studies show. Market-research executive Sterling Lanier was looking for successful new ideas a few years ago. 'I was in Death Valley from 2007 to 2010, thinking, 'Maybe I lost it,'' he says. 'Then I relaxed a little, went out to lunch, started telling stories while drinking beer' with a friend, a cancer epidemiologist. 'She started complaining about all the problems she had' getting research subjects to fill out arduous, 400-question medical surveys, Mr. Lanier says.

衆多研究還顯示，從你自己的專業領域遊離出來也有助於激發創造力。市場調研部門高管斯特林•拉尼爾(Sterling Lanier)幾年前一直在尋找不錯的新點子。“2007年至2010年間，我一直身處死亡谷(Death Valley)，當時想着，我可能迷失了。”拉尼爾說，“接着我稍稍放鬆了些，便出去吃午餐。在和一位癌症流行病學專家的朋友喝啤酒時，我開始講故事。”她則開始抱怨自己遇到的各種問題，她需要“讓自己的研究對象填滿那些費時費力、設有400個問題的醫學調查問卷。”

Then came his light-bulb moment: 'You have to make it entertaining. Why don't you just make it super fun and friendly on the iPad?' he asked. By applying market-research techniques to a new field, he came up with a colorful, gamelike medical questionnaire that became the basis for the new company he heads, Tonic Health of Palo Alto, Calif.; the product is being used at a growing number of research hospitals and clinics. To have a good idea, Mr. Lanier says, 'you have to be able to float through your environment with your antennae up, like a butterfly, and just let things ping your antennae.'

這時，拉尼爾腦中靈光一閃。他問道，“你必須得讓問卷生動有趣。爲什麼不把它設置在iPad上、使其超級有趣且淺顯易做呢？”拉尼爾通過將市場調研的技巧套用到一個新領域，想出了一個多彩有趣、遊戲式的醫學問卷。這一想法後來成爲了一家新公司的雛形，拉尼爾目前就掌舵這家位於加州帕洛阿爾託的健康滋補公司(Tonic Health)。現在，越來越多的研究醫院和診所都在投入使用他的這一產品。想要獲得一個好點子？拉尼爾的經驗是，“你得像蝴蝶一樣，豎起你的觸鬚、從自己所處的環境中飄起來。讓萬物與觸鬚碰撞，擦出創意的火花。”