[Jay Ts[_4_]]

On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 23:55:07 -0400, Gary Eickmeier wrote:

Have you noticed that your brain will keep working under cover on a
problem that you haven't solved yet if you just give it time?

The first time I ever heard of this was when I was looking through some
old (1950s) issues of Scientific American. There was an article on just
this subject by a European mathematician. He told a story of how he was
stumped by a problem he was trying to solve, and the solution came to him
just as he was stepping onto a train.

I've noticed the same kind of thing in myself many times, and I assume
the brain is capable of running background processes subconsciously. It
seems to work for me unless my attention is taken away by something that
saturates my senses or thought processes, requiring me to look at the
problem again to "reload".

In the 1950s, this effect would have seemed very mysterious to anyone,
but today, scientists are studying brain activity in real time (or
thereabouts) with brain scanners. Now it is understood that our brains
are active all of the time, and we are consciously aware of only a tiny
bit of the total activity.

That old thing about, "We use only 3% of our brains" was never true,
although something like that is true of the amount of our brain activity
we are conscious of.