So I'm sitting at my desk, drinking chai tea, browsing random tidbits through Google Reader, and I start to think about the brain, as I usually do, and a novel idea hit me: lateral thinking as a system to improve brain functionality!
Okay, so the idea isn't really all that novel, but it is a good enough idea to jump-start a line of personal research. Therefore, I'm going to incorporate the scientific method into this blog-post by creating a hypothesis, and my ongoing research will be aimed at either verifying or falsifying it. Why do I care so much about proving this? I think it could potentially lead to profound discoveries in psychological therapy and related fields. Easier said than done, however, most research I've conducted so far on this matter has led me to find more contradictions than proofs.
Take this article for example, which is a well-researched article on generally accepted neuroscience on different regions of the brain and how they operate. But it doesn't take neuroplasticity into question, a recent discovery that the brain is far more malleable and dynamic than previously thought, and has already led to amazing advancements for the sensory impaired. Basically this research heavily suggests that the brain is highly adaptable and is virtually unchanged from childhood into the adult years, and theoretically social conditioning is responsible for dumbing down our ability to retain information and think creatively.
There's a research project I have found myself frequenting recently called reciprocality, it tries to define concepts that are paradoxically impossible to define, but what they refer to as a condition that affects almost everyone that makes them more oriented to praise routine-based behaviors. The research started by noticing that some software engineers fared exponentially better at their jobs than most others with no clear explanation as to why. Because of the nature of the industry, employers have learned that if they wanted things done in a timely fashion, they needed people who were trained to do very specific tasks. Projects that treaded new territory or that were adapting to new technologies had no way of respecting any certain time-frame for their projects to be completed, since their obstacles are unforeseeable and took different levels of creativity to solve.
The research goes on to find the differences between people who think one way as opposed to another, how one group is more adaptable to finding solutions to problems and thinking outside the box while the other group is more likely to remain stuck 'in the box'. Its profound to some degree, people that do one thing well can only do that one thing well and have no frame of reference that will ever allow them to be able to get themselves outside the box they're trapped in, especially if they don't even know the nature of the box. The world we're turning into today is one where enough people are able to collaborate on projects where the variable areas of expertise allow hurdles to be crossed more efficiently, but I imagine we'll soon be treading into a world where everybody is more prepared to learn a more general set of skills that will allow them to solve more complicated and abstract problems.
That said, I have formed a general hypothesis: Abstract thinking may strengthen brain versatility and general problem-solving skills. The idea is based on the theory that linking different parts of the brain together in unusual ways allows for a greater level of idea association and the strengthening of neural pathways. Though more than proving this hypothesis to be true, I want to study the most effective way of strengthening the general adaptability of the brain in hopes that the mind will be more predisposed to exposing itself to new ideas and ways of thinking, you know, to be perpetually progressive. It might be the Buddhist in me looking for a scientific way of achieving transcendence, but hey, I don't see how this line of research could hurt anyone, so lets have it, shall we?
I won't go into too much detail about how I plan to support this hypothesis, but I will give updates on my research and findings periodically as well as show my experiment reports. This specific project will probably be running for a long time and I may decide to participate in smaller scientific pursuits to fill in the gaps. I will say however that I plan on using the principles of lateral thinking and apply them to more areas than just critical thinking. The idea is to find a system for linking different parts of the brain creatively and abstractly to see if causes significant changes in rational thought and problem solving skills.
In slightly different news, I continually find myself really enjoying lectures on how the brain works, the creative process, and discovering new and hopeful approaches to solving modern day problems. Anyone else that knows what I'm talking about has probably heard of TED, an annual conference where experts in a wide range of specialized fields are given a loud-speaker in order to exchange ideas with their colleagues. Appropriately subtitled as "Ideas worth spreading", the general public is encouraged to listen to these lectures in order to inspire a progressively oriented future. One incredible example of an inspiring lecture is Jill Taylor's recollection of a brain stroke through the eyes of a neuroscientist.
One of the reasons I find talks like these so fascinating is because it gives you a clearer view of how the brain operates in certain situations, giving us a glimpse of how our own minds could operate if we just knew how to control it better and take away the walls that limit the experiences of our day to day lives. It reminds me that the brain isn't just used for solving algebraic equations, but is actually necessary to witness beauty and profound experiences and to trigger dramatic life-style changes for the better.
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