(energetic music)
I'm Todd Sampson, and I'm on a quest for a better brain.
I've embarked on a unique three-month experiment
to see if science can turn any brain
into a super brain.
After one month of training, I've already doubled
my thinking speed, sharpened my attention,
and dramatically increased my memory.
I'm not changing the order of this deck ever.
But now, I want to turbo-charge my creativity.
Uh, now what do we do?
So on this episode, I'll be challenged
to expand my creative thinking, become more innovative,
and embrace lateral thinking.
We're all born with an enormous creative capacity,
but now modern science has developed techniques
that we can all use to improve our creativity.
Over the next four weeks, I'm going to hand my brain over
to some of the world's leading experts
to see if they can improve my creativity.
So get ready to be inspired, and transform your mind.
(energetic rock music)
(mellow music)
The brain is the most sophisticated machine known to man,
and creativity its most powerful asset.
If I'm going to boost my creative skills
in just one month, I need a creative guru to get me going.
The California State University in San Bernadino
is one of the leading lights in the world
of creativity research.
Dr. James Kaufman is a firm believer
that not only can creativity be learned,
it can even be measured.
In other words, he's a maverick.
I've written about 25 books and more than 250 papers
and they're all at the same basic essence
of what makes us creative, how can we become more creative?
You've written a play, as well, haven't you?
I've actually written about 15 plays and musicals.
Actually, the first one that I had staged
was staged in Australia.
Oh, what was it called?
It was called "Sweet as Cinnamon,"
it was about a serial killer.
Oh, that's good to know.
Okay, now that we got that serial killer thing
out of the way, let's make me more creative.
What I like to do is to find out where you are right now
with your creativity.
And I'm gonna give you a little test.
I'm used to tests.
The first test I'm gonna give you is called
the alternate uses test.
It's gonna look at your divergent thinking.
We look at divergent thinking as a component of creativity,
where whenever you get an idea, the first thing
that has to happen is you have to get many different ideas.
I'm ready.
How many different uses can you think of
for a shoe?
You're gonna do these tests with me, right?
Go.
Uh, it can be a hotel for ants.
It could be a plant-holder.
You could use it as a drum.
We could use it as a new cologne, shoe odor.
Oh, you could use it as a doorstop.
You could use it as a weapon, as a boxing thing,
to beat people, you can use it to kill flies.
So I'm gonna give you a different test.
I'm gonna draw some very basic shapes,
and I want you to then take two minutes, go.
Any ideas how you'd finish this?
It's known as the Torrance Drawing Test.
It's not about your actual drawing ability,
but open-mindedness, and how well you can
think outside the box.
And your time is up, pens down.
Let's see what you did, explain your drawing to me.
So I've done a thing called the Circle of Life.
So we start out as a butterfly,
then we become a snail with a shell,
and then we transform into a human lifting weights.
He basically then becomes a butterfly.
How is that going with ya?
Does this happen to you a lot?
(laughing) Yes, it does.
So basically you're saying you see
a mollusk-rooted nature of mankind.
You've got it, that's it.
Do you often smell cheese
when you're not aware of anything happening?
I don't know about cheese,
but I think someone has been sniffing the magic markers.
Are you ready for the next test?
I'm ready.
What I'd like you to do is to think of
a different thing for each triangle
that you might do with it.
You can fold it, you can rip it,
you can do whatever you want.
Okay, let's go.
All right.
That's one.
I'm gonna make some mini triangles.
These tests may seem a bit odd,
but they actually assess divergent thinking,
your ability to find many solutions.
And divergent thinking is the single
most important component of creativity.
Igloo, throwing star.
That's a house with a blue door.
Johnny Happy Face.
A fine job, Todd, are you ready for another test?
Oh, I'm ready.
Okay.
What if people could not wear clothing?
We would be more in touch with nature.
Animals in the wild would stay in the wild
'cause they would be afraid to
come out and see what they see.
The weight loss industry would boom.
Visiting old-age homes would be awkward.
Shaving cream would be huge.
Tanning, we would all, geez,
we'd need a lot of sunscreen, actually.
You're done, Todd, that's good.
Well, I've no idea what James can possibly
glean from all that, but it turns out
the assessment is way more scientific than I imagined.
Todd, we have your scores on how you did
on these creativity tests.
And what we did is we came up with scores
for every single action, one to five.
Averaged our scores, and then averaged the scores
across every single item.
First we did the alternate usage test.
The shoe test.
How many uses for a shoe.
Now, with this, we're gonna have two scores.
The first score is gonna be for your fluency,
how much can you come up with?
The second score is gonna be originality,
how rare or unique are your ideas?
So on the alternate usage, you got eight out of 10
for fluency, and you got six out of 10 for originality,
for a total of 14 out of 20.
Is that okay?
It's actually quite good.
Okay, next stop, reshaped triangles.
This time, only six for both fluency and originality.
How did the mustache do, 'cause that was my favorite one.
Well, let's turn to my helpers.
Heather, what did you think?
That was my favorite, I gave it a five.
Heather's so nice.
All right, how did my drawing do?
You had a strong, good continuation
and connected all the points together
with your Circle of Life.
I don't think you're gonna win a Nobel Prize for biology,
but you know, butterfly to a snail to Arnold Schwarzenegger
was pretty humorous, which added to your score.
You got a 6.9 for both originality and fluency.
You got some extra points for the narrative,
and for the symbolic usage.
So clearly there was no points for art.
We don't care whether or not you can draw.
We care about what's going on up here.
And up here is nothing if not consistent,
because my score for what if was in the exact same ballpark,
giving me a total score of 65.5%.
Is that score good or bad?
65 is really quite good.
I would say that most people would be in the
around 50 range, but you can do even better.
I believe creativity can be taught,
and with the training and techniques that I'm
going to give you, you are going to be more creative.
Well, now he's just scaring me.
But if James insists that creativity can be taught,
I think I'll believe him.
But in only one month?
This training had better be good.
I'm gonna give you three types of techniques to use.
For the first technique, I want you to do
a different divergent thinking exercise every day.
So keep trying the types of exercises
that we've been doing together.
Alternate uses, shapes, what if.
And doing that over and over again,
it will eventually result in me naturally
thinking more divergent or more creatively.
It will increase your divergent thinking.
It will not make you a better painter,
but it will improve how you approach
these everyday problems to solve,
and one way it does that is by
helping to overcome functional fixedness,
and it helps you to change this type of a mindset.
Changing mindsets, that makes sense.
All right, what next?
The second thing is every day,
try a food that you've never tried before in your life.
I want you to find a new way home or a new way to work
or a new way to the park.
These are little things.
If it's, let's say, jujitsu, try a new move,
learn a new move.
Now you're talking.
People who are open to experience are more creative.
The third thing is the actual creative production.
Uh-oh, here it comes.
I want you to actually do something creative.
Could be a performance, could be a poem,
could be a painting, try to compose something,
anything like that.
The key is to be able to turn off that functional fixedness
and allow yourself to brainstorm and
think of new cool ideas.
All right, that sounds fun.
It should be fun.
Creativity isn't always fun,
but there is always fun to be found within creativity.
Okay, so if I have to complete a creative challenge
in just a few weeks' time, I'm not going to muck around.
I want to find out how creative ideas
originate in the brain.
Rumor has it there's a guy in Chicago who knows.
(upbeat music)
(horns honking)
Scientists have discovered that analysis
and creative thinking work differently in the brain.
I'm about to meet the scientist who pioneered this research
and can demonstrate how my brain achieves creative insight.
So you're a specialist in creativity in the brain, right?
Right, in particular, we look at how people
solve problems with that feeling of sudden insight,
the sort of aha or eureka moment.
But isn't it the un-study-able?
I've never thought of creativity and science going together.
Well, let me put it this way.
Do you think some people are more creative than others?
Yes.
And do you think sometimes you're more creative
than you are at other times?
Sure.
And wouldn't you like to know
how to be more creative?
I definitely would.
Well, we're right now just trying to
study the basic processes, but we feel like
we have to understand those before we can
really help people be more creative,
and just to understand the process.
You know how sometimes when you're trying to
figure out a solution to something,
and you go through it methodically and logically,
mentally testing out different things
to come up with an answer?
That's analytical thinking.
And other times, you just get that lightbulb moment
where suddenly it pops into your head out of nowhere.
That eureka moment is an insight experience,
according to Mark Beeman.
He's discovered that the brain uses different pathways
for the two modes of thinking,
and I'm about to experience that distinction.
Here's what we're going to do today.
I'm going to give you just a whole bunch of word puzzles.
And they're pretty simple puzzles.
What you're going to do is you're going to see
three words on a screen, so have a look here.
For each problem, you'll want to generate
a solution word.
So for example, what word can go with pine, crab, and sauce?
So it has to fit with all three words.
Do you know the answer to this problem?
Is it apple?
Right, so this one is apple, good.
How would you say you solved that?
It was definitely not through any kind of logic.
It just sort of came.
So it just popped into your head.
We'll call that insight.
And so if you solved one like that in the scanner,
you'll press the outside button.
So you'll have two buttons in each hand.
And now I have absolutely no idea
what Mark is saying any more,
'cause I just heard the word scanner.
Oh yes, my old friend, the FMRI machine.
Good times.
(beeping)
And it just keeps on getting better.
Mark's gonna image my brain
as I try to solve the word puzzles.
He doesn't care if I get them right or wrong.
My job is to report back whether I used analysis
or insight to find the solution.
Okay, Todd, are you ready to go?
Yeah, sure.
Okay, a block of problems coming your way.
Okay, ready?
It's called the remote associates test.
Now, I only have a few seconds to solve each puzzle.
I believe the answer to this one is blind.
When I press the button to say I used analysis or insight,
Mark's assistant records the info to match up later
with the scans that show which areas of my brain are firing.
Try it yourself, and see if you can identify
whether your brain used analysis or insight.
Great, Todd, thank you very much.
You're done, we'll come in and get you in a minute.
Whew, glad that's over.
(energetic music)
The results show that an area in the right side
of the brain, the anterior temporal lobe,
became active when I solved a problem using insight.
This area processes and connects ideas
from deep within the brain.
So this area's in the right anterior temporal lobe,
and that's the area of the brain that's
pulling together distantly-related information.
So when we look at your data, we see a burst of activity
over the right temporal lobe.
This is just at the moment where the solution
that was actually drawing together
the different parts of the problem
was coming into consciousness.
So what to me was a eureka moment was in fact
my right temporal lobe connecting
distantly-related ideas in a new way.
That's why the idea felt like it came out of nowhere.
Analysis uses a different neural pathway
involving the frontal cortex, which blocks eureka moments.
So the chances of having an insight increase
once we stop analyzing.
And that's not all.
So anxiety tends to impair your ability
to solve with insight, and positive mood seems to help.
Anxiety would probably tend to narrow your focus,
and it would decrease activity in this anterior cingulet,
and positive mood helps you relax that area,
relax your degree of focus, to solve a problem with insight.
So what's all this got to do with creativity?
Well, consider this.
A eureka moment forges unique connections in your brain,
but analysis relies on existing connections.
So if your goal is originality,
learn to trust your insightful thinking.
(mellow music)
I've come to Leingarten in southern Germany
to explore another type of blocked creativity: mindsets.
Professor Bernd Lingelbach has spent a lifetime
working with illusions that reveal
how our brains get stuck in ruts.
Hi, I'm Bernd, I would like to show you something.
All right.
He's built a museum of optical illusions in his barn.
This one is his favorite.
Now, look at this.
Oh, wow.
That's the most bizarre thing.
That is amazing.
Freaky, right?
I'm half expecting someone to write "redrum" on the wall.
But there are no mirrors involved.
They're, in fact, identical twins.
There's some kind of trick here.
Some kind of trick, that's true.
That's amazing.
This room is an excellent example of how mindsets work
and how our perception is influenced as much
by what we expect to see as it is by
what we actually see.
Worked it out yet?
This should help.
It's the room that's freaky, not the girls.
It's called an Ames room, and it's totally distorted.
There are no right angles.
The left-hand corner is further back than the right,
so the back wall is not perpendicular.
The floor slopes.
It's only the angle of view
that makes it appear rectangular.
Nothing is parallel in here.
Nothing is parallel.
These walls are vertical, but not parallel.
So your brain is lying to you.
Yes, as usual.
That's comforting to know.
But what's fascinating is that even when
you know how the illusion works, your mind is still tricked.
Your brain is so convinced that all rooms are square
it's willing to concede that the girls
must be different sizes.
All illusions take advantage of our mindsets.
Because our brains operate by constantly finding shorctuts
to reach a conclusion.
What do you conclude from this image?
It's yet another mindset.
Mindsets block creativity, because we just continue
to view things the same old way.
But with the right training, some mindsets can be overcome.
Back in Sydney, James Kaufman has put me in touch
with a colleague whose specialty is an area
that's all about busting mindsets.
Innovation.
Dr. David Cropley is an engineer, lecturer, and author.
He's the ideal man to give me a crash course
in innovative thinking.
So creativity can be really abstract,
but innovation is very practical, very useful.
That's right, and that's why innovation
is such an important part of things like engineering.
You can build the world's most novel bridge,
but if people can't use it to get across a river
or if traffic can't go on it because it's not strong enough,
then it's not really innovation.
It's got to both be novel and interesting and surprising,
but useful as well.
Now I want you to build me something.
Okay, we're gonna go and get some materials,
I'm gonna set you a little challenge to test you.
I'm actually gonna build something!
Yep.
Oh, okay, brilliant.
Okay, Todd, you've got some materials here,
and using only a maximum of four of these things,
I want you to make a homemade knife.
So that's your challenge.
So this is like Jamie Oliver meets MacGuyver.
A little bit, yeah.
Okay, so make a knife using no more
than four of these basic household items.
Hmm, what do you reckon?
Tests like this encourage the brain
to break free of preconceived mindsets.
So I'm selecting the toaster, because of the heat.
I'm gonna use this, 'cause it's the only
sort of solid thing that I have.
Water, in case I burn the house down, and these.
And the only reason I chose these is because
this at least looks like something that can be melted.
Okay, your suggestion was pretty good and pretty close.
There's really only three materials that I need to do this.
All right, kids, look away now.
I don't want any angry parent emails.
What we need to do is just fold this into
a bit of a point, get it into the right kind of shape,
which in this case is gonna be a sort of poker.
I reckon David would be a popular man in prison.
It starts to get a little bit sticky and more pliable.
What I normally do is sort of knead it,
twist it a little bit so we start to get
a kind of pointy shape.
So now a little bit, you can see that's
really getting fairly solid now.
And if you keep at it long enough,
eventually you'll come up with this.
Okay. Wow.
Puncture there. Look at that.
So I reckon as a homemade knife,
it does a pretty good job.
That's amazing, this really works well.
Toaster, bag, poor tomato.
(mellow music)
David has another innovation test for me
that involves building something, well, kinda bizarre.
So I've designed a concept and bought all the gear.
Fingers crossed it'll actually work.
The task is you've gotta make a
mousetrap-powered wheeled vehicle.
The sole source of power is the mousetrap,
otherwise you can do pretty much anything you like.
We'll give you two hours, and let's see what happens.
You're really strict.
Okay.
That's right, a mousetrap-powered wheeled vehicle.
Go figure.
Okay, so that's the basic idea.
Sorry, David.
That one, uh, it works.
Since I'm being scored on this, I'm taking no chances,
and if there's one thing I learned in high school wood shop,
it's measure twice, cut once.
And keep your hair away from the drill press.
I hope this thing holds.
It seems pretty solid, actually.
Okay, so that's a little bit concerning.
Todd, you've got one hour to go.
One hour to go?
The aesthetics are going out the window.
(laughing)
Well, I can kill a mouse at long range.
I think I made a poor choice in string, but.
Get that wheel in there!
That's good.
How am I doing on time?
You've got five minutes left.
Five minutes?
Okay, if I can't make it fast using physics,
I'm gonna use Ferrari-red paint.
That should help.
And that's the direction it's gonna go in.
It doesn't look very good,
but I reckon it'll actually move,
and there'll be a lot of nervous mice
when they see this big contraption coming their way.
Let's give it a go.
You better be careful down that end,
'cause this might go straight through ya.
Okay, let's line it up.
At an absolute minimum, this things has to
reach the end of the table.
Ready, here we go.
Okay, success. Yes!
It works, it moved!
Well done, that's a good solution.
I think that's high praise coming from David.
But let's find out.
Seems he's invented a fancy formula for scoring innovation,
the Creative Solution Diagnosis Scale.
Now, the first end in my view,
and from an engineering point of view
the most important criterion, really,
is relevance and effectiveness, in other words,
does the product that you've created
do what we wanted it to do?
In this case, how far this thing can move.
Now, I said that getting to the end
of the test track was the sort of minimum target,
and you've achieved that, so I'd give it
a pretty good score for relevance and effectiveness.
Maybe, let's say, 18 out of 25.
That's a good score?
Uh-oh, this is not starting out well.
So let's look at the novelty of your solution.
Now, this is where there's still some room for improvement.
The fact is, using the energy stored in the spring
in the way that you've done and maybe
extending it with a lever the way you have,
using a piece of string to turn the axle,
is a very conventional solution.
It doesn't have that sort of surprise, aha,
I never would have thought of that reaction.
Okay?
So from the point of view of scoring this,
I would give it, say, five out of 25.
Five out of 25?
You are kidding me.
But again, that's-- Five out of 25.
There's middle, which would be 12 1/2,
and then there's five.
Yep.
Five out of 25.
Yep, because like I said, it's not original
and surprising, it's an obvious solution.
(sighing) Moving on.
One aspect of elegance is, in simple terms,
whether or not it looks like a finished product.
For example, the axle is fairly loose,
so that could be improved.
The string rubs on the wood here, so that creates friction.
Clearly, the visual appear could be better,
but you've made some attempt to sort of make it look nice.
For that reason, I think you're scoring
somewhere in the middle, so I'm gonna give you 12 1/2.
Oh, wow, look at that. Out of 25 on this one.
All right, so who said
lipstick on a pig doesn't work?
All right, Todd, the last criterion,
it's the toughest one and the most abstract one,
is what I call genesis, and it relates to
whether or not your product opens up
new perspective and sort of generates new ideas.
I'm going to give it 10 out of 25 for genesis.
And 10 out of 25 is about how I'm feeling right now,
leaving me with the enviable score of 45.5 out of 100.
I love this guy.
He's just insulted me for the last 10 minutes,
and he's done it with a smile.
It's like, sure, you're unoriginal,
you're useless at making things in two hours,
it actually looks pretty ugly,
and it's got no novelty, so I'll round that off
to a 45 out of 100.
Anyway, I'll take it on the chin.
Okay, so my innovation skills obviously need a boost.
So David set me up with 30 minutes of daily training.
Now it's back to my gym for the brain to do my homework.
Innovative thinking can be learned, but it takes practice.
David wants me to keep thinking outside the box,
and free my mind of rigid rules.
So he's sent me a task called functional descriptions.
Firstly, I have to find an everyday object,
let's say a screwdriver.
I define its function using a verb and a noun.
So in this case, applies torque.
I then come up with other objects
that could also do the same job.
Have a go, and see how quickly
you can come up with four alternatives.
(mellow music)
Despite the lessons learned from my creativity gurus,
my impending art challenge is weighing heavily on my mind.
I need some advice from someone
who's renowned for her creative thinking.
Installation artist Janet Echelman
is a globally acclaimed sculptor, lateral thinker,
and most importantly, innovator.
Janet is the creator of works on a grand scale.
Massive urban art installations that
fluidly respond to wind, rain, and light.
These feats of engineering are exhibited around the world.
From Phoenix to Madrid, Vancouver to Sydney.
Welcome to the studio.
This is a cool space.
Wow, it feels like we're underwater, with these nets.
And actually, I'll pull that down for you.
We use a very high-tech system here.
Yeah, it's great. There you go.
And it's actually for this model, is a campus,
and it's going to interconnect
the three buildings of the campus.
These areas needed to be tied together
and they needed a focal point that lifted your eyes
upward to the sky.
So it's intuition, you looking at it,
getting a feel for what it needs.
That is the most important information source I have
is just how I feel when I am walking through the place.
That's where I start.
What's interesting is part of my training
is to try and figure out how to get in touch
with that insight or intuition or feeling side,
because logic seems to take over,
and the scientists have studied this in great detail
and logic can often get in the way.
My sense is that we all are getting this intuitive
information from our body.
I think it's like a quiet voice that says something,
but is not paid attention to, so it just dissipates.
And I have actually trained myself
to pay more attention to them.
But Janet's got more than one trick up her sleeve
for transforming her intuition
into a fully-blown, scientifically-engineered project.
So I made this time lapse of a complete day,
day and night, and then from each of those images
we batch analyzed the color in each of those moments
of the sky, and then we graft it radially,
and that's where we got the form that we're modeling today.
So your work is as much intuition and inspiration
as it is science, isn't it?
That looks like you've done a weather chart
for a science program.
So for me, there's no separation.
Intuition, science, research, thinking, feeling,
I don't know where one of those things ends
and the other begins.
We just do whatever we are inspired to do
and follow those directions.
Okay, let's try 1.75.
Janet's multidisciplinary approach
means she often has to innovate techniques
to bring her pieces to life.
So what are you proposing?
I need to collaborate and learn and work
with all kinds of people with different expertise.
Engineers, architects, fabricators, hand workers.
They expand my work to something I could never do.
One of her biggest innovative breakthroughs
came when designing this mobile festival piece
which came to Sydney in 2011.
With its shape born out of data analysis of a tsunami wave,
getting it off the page was proving tricky.
We realized that the form was too complicated
to make the way I had made every other sculpture before,
with a steel ring that held its form.
Because this was a more complex shape,
it just couldn't be built with steel,
it would be too heavy.
And so it forced me to think of a new way.
I realized that if I put a grid of a soft mesh
on top of it, and I could link those points with the grid,
I could create an entirely soft
and much lighter-weight sculpture.
So you were in a mindset that you created
that you've used for a majority of your art,
and then suddenly you switched mindsets
and created something different.
And what seems like a limitation actually
opened up the door to a greater innovative solution.
Wow, that settles it.
I want a brain more like Janet's.
(mellow music)
(upbeat music)
And believe it or not, I know of just the man
to help me bend my mind.
I've come to Sydney University, where a scientist reckons
he can unleash my hidden creativity
using a piece of technology that disables
the part of my brain that actually blocks creativity.
While I'm uneasy about having my brain disabled,
I'm excited by the potential.
Todd! Hello, Allan.
Nice to meet you.
Professor Allan Snyder is one of the world's
leading experts on understanding the creative mind.
Well, let's take a look at this one over here first.
I mean, this looks like a Leonardo da Vinci, doesn't it?
It's a four-year-old girl, four-year-old,
and not only that, it's a girl who has autism.
Wow, she's four?
Here is, the same girl, at about five years old,
and look at the elaboration.
Wow, but clearly not everyone has that capability.
Or do they?
Well, why not?
Nadia, this autistic savant, I believe,
has something we all have within us.
But she has some sort of privileged access
to that information.
So I'm interested, you're gonna use a piece of technology
to disable one part of my brain.
Inhibit a part. Inhibit a part of my brain
to increase the creativity.
I'm gonna try to turn on something in you
by turning a part of your brain off.
Amazing.
Let's go down to the lab, you ready?
I'm ready, let's give it a go.
Let's go.
Before Allan can zap my brain,
he first needs to test my creative ability.
Okay, Todd, I have a little matchstick
arithmetic test for you.
Right now it says, in Roman numerals,
nine equals nine plus nine.
Can you move the matchstick, one matchstick only,
to make this a valid equation?
I don't think I can solve this one.
Can you name three consecutive days
without using the words Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday?
Good day, bad day, some day?
That's not the answer.
(laughing) Okay, fair enough.
Okay, Todd, now the big moment's here.
We're going to put the electrodes on you.
The cathode will be on your left temporal lobe,
and the anode, the positive, will be on your right.
So a part of my left brain that
interprets information will be zapped with
enough electricity to inhibit it for two hours.
This frees up the part of my right brain
associated with raw perception and creativity,
the same region that Mark Beeman identified
as generating insights.
Richard's going to start turning the current on,
and what I want you to do is report any feelings you have.
(whirring)
Yeah, I can't, okay.
So I'm definitely getting brighter, better color sensation.
The feeling of being under that brain stimulation
was a definite switch on.
It was like someone had turbo charged my head.
My mind became energetic, I became really optimistic.
I felt really free.
Okay, let's revisit the problem that
you had so much difficulty with.
How can you fix that up?
Moving just one match.
As soon as I did it the second time,
I was looking at it completely differently.
It could be the obvious one, which is that.
That's it, very good, you got it.
Okay, let's return to the riddle.
Can you name three consecutive days
without using the words Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday?
The second time around with the riddle,
I fell like I was approaching it much more originally.
Today.
The only thing that was different is,
I didn't give it up.
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
That's right, you got it.
Is that actually right?
That is right.
So how on Earth has Allan managed
to change my brain function?
Well, the electrical current temporarily suppresses
my left anterior temporal lobe, the brain's filter.
So I get privileged access to the uncensored raw info
from the right temporal lobe.
I can now think more creatively,
without being limited to my mindsets.
There's this kind of generally accepted belief
that the left hemisphere dominates the right hemisphere.
We learn through the right, and we conceptualize
that information in the left.
And by inhibiting the left, we free up the right.
So we got you to be more literal.
Like any expert, right, you're blinded by your expertise,
and that's the bottleneck to creativity.
You're looking out at the world
through the mindsets that you've accumulated.
It's hard to break them.
Well, I've got about 30 minutes left
before this wears off, so I'm going to make the most of it.
But I'd like a way of being open to other perspectives
that's more permanent.
And so it hit me.
That's my next skill to master, lateral thinking.
(upbeat jazzy music)
I've come to this amazing building in Melbourne
called the RMIT Design Hub.
This is where people come to collaborate
and think more creatively.
I'm going to meet an expert here
who's going to teach me about lateral thinking.
Hi, I'm Susan.
Welcome to the design hub.
Did you choose this place?
This is amazing. I did.
Isn't it beautiful?
Susan Mackie is the CEO of Melbourne's De Bono Institute,
founded by the legendary Edward de Bono,
who coined the term lateral thinking in the '70s.
But Susan's also living proof expanding your thinking
can change your personal circumstance,
even in the face of adversity.
And it's also a practical thing for you,
'cause if I'm not mistaken, I hope I got this right,
you had a stroke when you were 30
and you actually used brain training to overcome that.
Yes, I did.
So I was in a wheelchair for quite a while,
and I just decided that this was not workable.
So I did an awful lot of training
to be able to learn how to walk again, write again.
I think the last thing I've just
learned how to do is stairs.
That's amazing.
So you're a real-live version of neuroplasticity.
I am, but I think there's lots of us that are,
that, I think that's the beautiful thing about
knowing how much we know now about the brain
that we can overcome all these limitations
through good training.
Everyone's heard the phrase lateral thinking,
but I don't really know what it means.
What does it mean?
Okay, well, there's probably a simple way to describe it,
and the notion is actually bumping your mind
out of its thinking patterns or thinking ruts
to take a new pathway.
I've been doing a lot of training on mindsets,
changing mindsets, being aware of mindsets.
It's similar, isn't it?
Very similar.
It is a mindset, because a mindset is
about shifting a pathway, and actually shifting
a particular way of seeing something or
a particular way of looking.
So it's about shifting your perception.
You know they did, like, cranial shock on my brain,
to get me to get out of my mindset.
And?
It actually worked.
I saw things differently.
So you bumped your mind out of its ruts.
Yeah, so it wasn't more of a bump, it was more of a fry.
(laughing) Well, maybe we should rather teach you
how to bump your mind out of its ruts
just using a bit of lateral thinking.
So no electricity, all right?
I promise.
I still get funny when I walk by a microwave.
Studies show that being creative keeps the brain healthy
by laying down new neural pathways.
The De Bono Institute teaches a range of skills
to open up the mind, but their most renowned technique
is an oldie but a goodie, used by many institutions
all around the world.
It's called the six thinking hats.
The idea is that metaphorically,
you switch hats from one type of thinking
to another type of thinking, and through switching,
you then start to break up the thinking into easy paths.
The beauty of the six thinking hats is that
instead of jumping to the first solution that comes to mind,
it forces you to look at a problem
from many different angles.
But I'm not really a hat man, so.
Blue is like the conductor of an orchestra,
defining your goals and the types of thinking
you need to solve the problem.
White is for information, gathering your facts.
It's for pure data.
Green is for ideas and letting your imagination go wild.
It's about putting your inner critic on hold.
Red signifies feelings and emotions,
using your gut instinct or intuition.
Yellow is for optimism.
What are the benefits, and what's the potential?
Black is the flip side, spotting the risks, dangers,
and where things might go wrong.
It's the black thinking that most of us
are a bit too expert at.
Okay, I wanna generate some ideas.
So by ensuring you view any problem
from multiple perspectives, you radically
increase your chances of finding an original solution.
So we're gonna try and get the global stats.
Susan wants me to practice applying it
to a wide range of issues,
and I'm already using it to structure my ideas
for my upcoming art challenge.
Maybe an idea will be to visualize the words.
But before I can pull that off,
I better get a move on with my training.
(upbeat music)
One of the things I've been tasked to do
is try ordinary, everyday activities in a different way.
You may find it surprising to know
that one of the best brain training activities you can do
is brushing your teeth with your weaker hand.
Oh, this is not good.
Whoa, whoa!
Science shows that you can force new connections
in your brain just by having new experiences.
And that can make you up to 15% more creative.
That looks like a brain.
That brain was quite good.
Mm, dried fish snack.
All in the name of creativity.
So has the pain been worth the gain?
There's only one way to find out.
I'm off to meet David Cropley at my gym for the brain
for another exercise in humiliation.
So what we'd like to do today is retest you
to see what sort of impact that training has had,
and we're gonna start with the shapes test,
to generate as many ideas as you can
using these different shapes.
TV.
That's my house.
That's Jessi.
Coaster.
That's it, time up.
I'd like you to come up with as many
alternative uses as you can for that plastic cup.
It could be used for catching bugs.
It could be used as a drum.
We could use it as a patch for an eye.
Luke, I am your father.
We could use it as a muzzle.
We could smash it.
We could use it as a sound device.
Okay, what if gravity was half as strong as it is now?
I would be able to run a lot faster,
'cause there would be less pulling me to the ground.
The moon would be further away from us.
I have no idea if I'm doing well.
But one thing I do remember is half my score
will be fluency, or number of ideas,
and the other half for originality.
People working in tall buildings
might get a bit more motion sickness.
Remember this one?
The Torrance, or incomplete drawing test.
Look out.
(beeping)
Okay, time's up, Todd.
Okay, so the whole thing exists
within an old-school television with the antennas
and buttons, but it's called "The Morning After Show."
They come out in the morning after a big night,
and the sun is so hot, which of course
results in a bad reaction.
Okay, what's this over here, Todd?
Oh, that's the director's cut.
(mellow music)
I'm a bit skeptical that my divergent thinking scores
might have actually improved.
All right, David, I know I can rely on you
to give it to me straight.
Now, for the overall, combining those tests together,
there's a 37 out of 50 for fluency,
36 1/2 out of 50 for originality, and so that was
a total score of 73 1/2 out of 100.
And that's a really excellent score.
My old scores were good,
but it was originality that let me down.
But this time, both my fluency
and originality scores have improved.
Not bad for one month of training, for just an hour a day.
But there's still the innovation test left to do.
So Todd, your task is once again
to do a mousetrap-powered wheeled vehicle.
Oh, my old friend.
There's your old friend.
And by friend, I of course mean arch nemesis.
Okay, mousetrap, game on.
(energetic music)
Better make it good this time, Sampson.
None of that five out of 25 rubbish again.
That's it, look at that.
Success, kind of.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking.
Uh, mousetrap, Todd?
But just bear with me on this one.
So I need to put the car on top,
then as the balloon expands, the car lets go.
That's pretty cool if that actually works.
(laughing)
Watching Todd do the mousetrap exercise,
it's clear that he's thinking in a novel sense,
taking risks and doing things differently from the obvious.
So he recognized that the energy stored in the mousetrap
is not just in the spring, but it's also embodied
in the chemical structure of the mousetrap,
and that's a big shift in thinking,
that's a big creative step.
Okay, let's test the theory.
Here it goes.
Oh, yes!
Well done, it's worked.
We have fire, and we have car, gone!
Wow, okay, uh, now what do we do?
This thing doesn't go out, man.
(laughing) That was awesome.
Okay, Todd, look, that's really great,
and I think we've seen some real creativity here today
and you've really put into practice
the things we've talked about.
In terms of effectiveness, you certainly did a good job.
I gave you a score of 20 this time, in comparison to 18
last time, that's out of 25.
Okay, now for novelty, last time,
you only used the energy stored in the spring,
and this time, you actually used
a combination of several different things,
which is something that really impressed me.
So 20 out of 25 for novelty.
Oh, much better than the five.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm still recovering from the five.
We cut some jokes, but I no longer care
about the other two scores.
But for the record, for elegance, I got 15,
and for genesis, another 20.
That's 75% compared to 45.5% the last time.
So well done, it's an excellent piece of work,
and it's particularly good to see--
Wow, shucks, Dave.
I guess that training has really worked.
So I've got no more excuses.
It's time to put my money where my mouth is
and face my creative art challenge.
I'm interested in urban public art,
and have often thought that derelict buildings
are a real opportunity to do something cool.
So I want to install an art piece
in a heritage workshop on Sydney's historic Cockatoo Island.
And if this works, hopefully it can inspire others
to give abandoned city buildings another life.
Well, that's the theory, anyway.
But to turn this around quickly,
I'm going to need a collaborator.
(lively music)
Mike Hewston is a painter, photographer,
and installation artist who specializes in
large-scale urban works.
Mike's philosophy is to create something that allows
the beauty of the original space to shine through.
So he's the perfect man to help
bring my vision into reality.
Together, we've designed a concept, created a print,
and are headed out to Cockatoo Island
for the final installation.
Now I'm getting nervous, because if this idea
doesn't come off, I'm gonna have
scary James Kaufman to answer to.
It's pretty full on. Yeah.
I reckon we might've bit off more than we can chew here.
Yeah, possibly.
It'll be pretty cool once we get the work up there.
You know, it's our chance to show these spaces
can be amazing, by taking an element of it
and reflecting it back on itself.
I just wish we would've chosen
a smaller building to do it in.
Do you think I'm kidding?
Yeah, all right, let's raise this dead body here.
This piece is 80 kilos' worth of our creative inspiration,
innovation, and lateral thinking,
and we just have to get all 190 square meters of it
suspended from the roof.
It's big.
So you know what this means?
Somebody's going 20 meters up.
And that would be me.
He just said "Nice knowing you."
With my new innovation skills, Mike and I devised
a rope and pulley system to hoist it into place.
So you want it here, hey?
You gotta make sure that it's--
There's a bit more at stake than
a mousetrap-powered car.
I just hope we got the maths right.
Yee-ha!
(mellow music)
Art is often thought of as you put your stamp on it.
We're not doing that.
We're going to reflect the beauty, the history,
the DNA of the place, and celebrate it through art.
Three, two, one, up.
Just try and keep even tension on it.
In my mind, the most relevant way to do an artwork
is to use the inherent beauty in what's already here,
and then reflecting it back on itself.
You see what's already there with new eyes,
and you can get input or really look at it
and make something new.
Wow, woo-hoo!
It's starting to get a bit of that ramp effect where
you feel the, like, ceiling coming down on you.
It looks like the ceiling's falling.
But it's not quite finished yet.
Looks pretty finished to me.
No, we got one more thing.
What's that?
To do to finish it.
You're gonna add something?
I'm gonna add something.
What, what are you gonna do?
For some instant divergent thinking,
just add water.
For me, adding the water really completed the work.
It was the obvious feature that was lacking.
By wetting the floor, it both darkened the space,
so you could feel the height of the structure,
but it also doubled the work,
in that you could see the print itself
reflecting in the water, and you've got the skylights
reflecting in the water, which added a
whole nother dimension to the work.
Wow, we did it!
Look at that.
That is amazing, and we hit the brief.
Well done with the water.
All right.
It works really well.
I'm really proud of what we
managed to achieve with our urban art.
It's a simple, elegant concept
that could easily be translated
to enhance any significant space.
But there's one final touch I've given it for extra appeal.
Ultraviolet light.
Now that's lateral thinking.
Creativity is the driving force
behind everything we've ever built.
The next generation of leaders will be the ones
that learn how to harness creativity
in themselves and others.
Humanity's future will rely not just on technology
but on how creative we all become.
Thanks, Todd!
I spent my entire career working the creative industries,
but the tools and techniques I've learned
over the last month will stay with me
for the rest of my life.
I really look forward to the next phase
of my mental journey.
In the final episode of "Redesign My Brain",
I want to strengthen my mind-body connection.
I'll learn the new science of body intelligence.
I don't know how to breathe.
Just a small thing.
And the importance of visualization.
I'll attempt a superhuman challenge
that not even Houdini could manage.
And I'll find out if my brain has physically changed
with only three months' training.