 Now, why am I talking about this daydreaming thing, because sometimes daydreaming can become pathological that you stay in your default mode network and it happens to some people who have some mental illnesses. For example, people who have schizophrenia, you heard of disorders like schizophrenia, they stay in that default mode network and they cannot come out and access what is happening in the real world. But what might interest you is how you can get better at being bored, how can you get bored more efficiently. Now, it is not simple not enough to simply daydream, you know letting the mind drift is the easy part, you know much more difficult is to maintain a touch of awareness that is called meta awareness, what is happening more or less and if you happen to come up with something useful in your daydreams come back to reality and say hey you know what that makes sense let us write it down or let us you know put a yellow post it note and that is very very important. So, whole thing of annoying you know which is I am bored is a gift, but it is only a gift if you are able to do stop start and you are able to have some amount of control over it. So, as creative people that is a gift that you must exercise and you need to learn how to you know turn it off and on. So, we can actually get better at being bored, how do we do that this is something that painters have learnt to do you know when you are when I am talking about these parts of the brain activity when you paint you are using two distinct areas of the brain one in front is called the task positive I know what I am doing you know when I am drawing a line every part of my brain especially the frontal part is telling me that am I drawing it straight am I drawing it straight right I am standing in front of you this part is controlling it and yet there is a part behind which is called the task negative whose job it is to say you know what this line is actually part of a tree because the task negative is the part of the brain where the attention wanders and here are the day dreams memories and fantasies that we have. So, it is necessary to be aware of that while one is drawing you know I am sure all you design students do that all the time that you are using both parts of your brain you are wandering from one to the other you are when you are doing something you are aware of where it needs to be how it needs to be how precise it needs to be, but you have a meta thinking that it needs to be part of a bigger story right. I am standing here part of my brain is saying am I doing the right thing am I saying the right words did I say the last sentence is it a continuation of what I am going to say next and yet there is one part of my brain saying you know why am I talking to all these people what is the larger picture that I want to give does it relate to what I know right. So, as creative people when you get bored you need to learn to do both of these I will come back to how one does that this line the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu called it doing without trying to do sometimes you try to do too much and there are people who spend a lot of time in draftsmanship in penmanship they get too precise in that and then they cannot go back to the task positive the task negative there are some people who are trying to do abstract art without doing the task positive and they cannot use the task positive and. So, what happens is you know vacuous clouds they create, but it is not a painting and then there are some people who do precise things and it is not a painting it is just a technical drawing. So, for creative people one needs to know how to go back and forth I will just end this portion with something that you know I found fascinating some of you guys do cinema are you aware of something called neuro cinema and that Hollywood is now using neuro cinema to try and see whether their films will be successful or not it started off it is a very early it is in its infancy and I am just mentioning it as a joke to you guys, but what they found is that they could using these principles predict the gross revenue of the films as to whether film chaleikine this is something all the Bollywood producers are worried about know he I will put in so much is going to run or not. So, how they do it is they show people a film and then they basically look at how people the target audience reacts to the film and they worked out certain coordinates which is called inter subject correlation that is suppose they are five people do all five respond to the film in the same way. Let me just show you examples this is a response to an Alfred Hitchcock film this is the extent you know of the involvement across if I think they use some 10 people and they found that there was a commonality of activity this was the commonality of activity to good the bad and the ugly you have seen that film this was the commonality of activity to comedy TV series called curb your enthusiasm some of you might have seen it and this was the activity to an unstructured documentary shot in Washington square just they kept the camera there and then they shot as you have seen people responded much more to this particular film to the Alfred Hitchcock film which the guys who did this experiment said is understandable Alfred Hitchcock catches your thing and it is it is very well constructed. So, the extent of the ISE deferred for the four movies the percentage of the brain exhibiting high ISE provided a measure of the overall effectiveness or collective engagement power of each movie to induce similar responses to other viewers. So, like I said you know I have already explained that the Hitchcock got the greatest number of I mean the greatest amount of response indicating a high level of control on the viewers mind and this had the lowest level of control on the viewers mind. So, different directors and different filmmaking styles apparently exert varying levels of control over the cortical response of the brain response of viewers. Now, the amount of control what these guys are saying this is very early on I cannot really say that this is established. But what these guys are saying is that the amount of control employed by filmmakers exists on a continuum that ranges from real life least amount of control to a well scripted Hollywood film where every line every comma every breath is scripted and if it is then it is more likely to catch hold of peoples imaginations. What I am going to talk about today is basically about how the human brain perceives art why does it why does the human brain create art how does look at art how does it process art and you know I am at the end of the day a clinician. So the question that I ask myself is can one use art as a window to the troubled mind and most important can we can we use art to heal. So, I will try and answer some of these questions from you know recent research that has been done. But when you look at art you are aware that human beings in every culture have sought out a variety of experiences which have been described as aesthetic which have been linked to perception of external objects. People have looked at paintings listen to music you know there is even art in cooking and tasting. But what are the neural underpinnings what are the brain underpinnings of say listening to music or looking at work of art. So, the question number one is how does art and aesthetics spring from the human brain you know why am I talking mostly about humans because we are not really sure whether dogs and cats appreciate art to the best of my knowledge they do not create art. Although sometimes you know you would read of some elephant which has been taught to use a brush and splash paint and then you sell the painting at huge price. But you know the jury is out as to whether that really is art. So the three areas of interest are representation, emotion and creativity. How does one represent something that one sees or experience through the form of a painting through music etcetera. The second is how does work of art evoke a certain emotion in you. And the third one is of course about creativity you know I might draw and paint. But if I am not creative it is not really going to evoke emotion. And I might try very hard to do something and I am not able to do it. And somebody else will just wake up and do something and will have this a-ha reaction and will do it. So how does that happen. So representation is about how the brain transforms perceptual inputs into mental representation whether it is images, musical structures etcetera. Emotion is how are emotions emulated by works of art. Because the greatest works of art are actually emulating some emotion you know when you hear a piece of music it is supposed to invoke a particular emotion in you. And how brains attach an aesthetic value to works of art you know I might draw a painting. But you see Picasso's painting and you will say wow you certainly pay much more for Picasso's painting than you will for mine is not it. So how do brains attach importance to that. And third is of course about creativity artistic creativity. The second area of question is as I told you I will talk about is art is a window to the troubled mind. And the question number three is whether art can used to heal to rehabilitate remedy to enhance function not just necessarily people who are not well. But for people who are well can they be made better. So how does art and aesthetic spring from the human brain. Let us start off you know with different kinds of things you know one needs to when one talks of art one is not really talking of great paintings. One is also talking about pretend make believe that we do when we you know use our dolls and we you know we pretend you know that is really drama in the most primitive sense you know when you go and see a painting and try to copy it you know that is also art. When you try to make sense out of a jumble which is a Jackson Pollack painting you are also trying to fathom what is there you know you are using your brain to do that. And of course when you try and represent something I mean for example this is somebody man trying to imagine himself as a woman. And so therefore wearing you know there are these therapy courses that are done to teach people about sensitivity to you know gender sensitivity etcetera. Sometimes you give dolls to young people and they carry these crying dolls to their class etcetera to teach them how difficult it is to bring up children. So, that itself is also an art form in that sense, but the eye cannot see what the mind does not know. And basically this is a very busy slide, but what I wanted to talk about is that if I do not know something exists is it really there because what you see and what I see are different it is the same object. This one you know what you see and I see are different what you and I make out of it are different, but we learnt over the years to call it a pen because our sensory systems are different. The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend and we spent many years trying to understand that. But having said that the visual system in human beings allows us to assimilate information from the environment, but it is a mechanical thing somewhere in the brain these have to be put together to make a representation of what is out there. And each one's brains make a different representation. So, it is like we are like goldfishes in a bowl reality that we perceive is not quite real you know this is we have gone into the field of philosophy, but our view of the world is constantly distorted by something or the other starting with our genetic make up with our cultural predispositions etcetera. For example, in some primitive societies they cannot count up to 10 they count in units of 5. So, their perception of the world is based on their cultural knowledge. The classic thing which I will talk about later is if you go and play a sitar to a finish audience who have not ever heard of a sitar or Indian music they will probably describe it as screeching sound they will not be able to perceive the beauty of it. You will be able to perceive the beauty of it because your culture has programmed you to understand the nuances of this this cluster of sounds. So, it is clear that the sky is not really blue it is just that that is what our minds create out of our perceptions. For some people whose minds cannot create it they often see the sky is red or whatever color you know people who are who are color blind which is where we come to the ancient Sanskrit word of Rasa you know Rasa is to take to to inspecate to squeeze out the meaning and that is what the human brain does best it gathers information gathers perceptions and squeezes out a meaning. Let me go past this is the picture of a of an antelope you know why we see it because as a part of evolution parts of our brain have developed specialized forms specialized functions to look at the spatial form to recognize that this is a dear object recognition to detect the contour to see the color to see depth, but these are all done separately. So, there are different parts in the brain say for visual activation the part here for example in the visual area processes where something is these are the areas in the brain which process what what is this what is this is different from where it is you know for people who have this area knocked out they can say this is a moda, but they do not know how far it is similarly there are areas in the in the brain which are specialized for face recognition. Now, if I see you sitting there and I have seen you earlier all these three areas have to send me information and I have to work it out that it is you who have seen earlier in the morning sitting six feet away from me and I recognize your face, but all three have to work together then there is another area for semantic activation that is putting a name to it you know it is a great skill putting a name to a face it is unfortunately a skill which I am losing very fast, but so Picasso was one person who deconstructed this you know the whole cubism movement you know by deconstructing this space and form and contour you know he used the brain's ability of putting these together and by reconstructing it to create mystery in your minds. And he very famously once said every child is an artist the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up from the neuroscientist point of view this is very significant because children see things differently from adults you know how children see children see these different parts as different parts and then they have to put it laboriously in their brain they have to put it together. So, if you see how children draw you see how children draw do you remember how you do when you were children they draw in ways which adult to try to learn how to draw, but as they grow up this process of putting things together becomes an automatic thing. So, the way adults see the world is very different from how children see the world. So, for an adult to draw like a child you have to relearn the entire process and Picasso says that he had to relearn the entire process of looking at the world as a child and redrawing I am doing drawings like a child. Kids see differently than adults kids under the age of 12 perceive visual information differently kids separate visual information these childhood methods of processing may allow kids to fine tune their visual methods as they grow, but once you fine tuned it then you have to unrefine it to be able to see you know when you when you are creating a work of art you have to then unrefine it again you am I have I lost you there no. So, we come to how art enthralls the brain again to quote Picasso art is the lie that reveals the truth you know just merely representing what is what you are seeing is not interesting you know of a plane photograph is not interesting and ever since the discovery of photography artists have stopped representing reality as they see it they are trying to reconstruct deconstruct you know bend catch the attention you know there was a you heard of E. M. Foster the writer he said as far as art is concerned whether it is literature etcetera there is only one thing that you need to do he said only connect that is you know have to whatever you do has to connect to a human brain and however you do it is actually the process of art. So, you have heard of Dr. Ramachandran Villainur Ramachandran the phantom limb person he and others have worked on this whole thing of neuro aesthetics as to what is the neurology of aesthetics you know what is aesthetic and why is something aesthetic and they worked out certain principles of why something is aesthetic and why something is not why does it catch the eye why does it catch the human brain why does it connect and some of these things that I will go through he says that you know any great work of art achieves what is called a peak shift that is if you look at a Chola bronze you will immediately know that this is not how real women look you know real women do not have such thin ways they do not have such long hands they do not have such protuberant breasts but that is what the artist does he shifts the peak he or she shifts the peak the peak has been shifted this has been shifted and immediately grabs your attention. So, that is one of the principles that artists use knowingly or unknowingly to grab the attention of the brain the other one is called perceptual grouping what do you see in this is this a jumble of splotches or do you see a face here why is it a face because in your mind all these splotches have got grouped together and you see the face isn't it. So, this is something that the brain does and the artist has over time realize that if you exploit this the brains are wow then the other one is contrast this is you know who this is Paul Clay what is this you use this and you contrast this with a different color a different temperature and immediately this hits you it strikes out isolation what do you see in this picture the red dot it is isolated you have the splotchy yellows and you have the red dot and it is isolated by the black right this is called perceptual problem solving there are lots of things here, but as soon as it is given to you your brain is saying what I cannot make sense what is this, but then it becomes very interested and you see the yellows you see the reds and you see that this is a cafe scene. So, so on and so forth I am not going to go into all of these there is another thing for example, this is abhorrence of coincidence the brain does not like coincidence. So, what is this is this two things one behind the other is this perspective or is it actually two shapes like this if I didn't show you this what would you think with this one behind the other because the brain doesn't want this and so it automatically decides that it is one behind the other and this is something that artists and designers use. So, anyway I don't want to bore you by going through all these things, but again let me give you an example in ways in which artists have learnt to hack the brain. This is Monet's field of poppies coquelico what do you see just look very closely at the painting no look at the painting what is happening there they are moving what is moving not the people if you see the movement comes from somewhere else nope it is the poppies which are moving, but you saw the movement is it, but there is no movement Monet drew this more than 100 years ago, but why do you see movement there let me do one thing let me take the color out there are the poppies no poppies right Monet discovered one great artistic principle then he bring the color back again he actually painted these at the same color temperature they just contrast, but the color temperature is the same. So, what happens is the parts in our brain which see in black and white which is the part in our brain which actually is supposed to look for distance for shape etcetera keeps firing and looks at it in black and white and sees no difference the poppy and the green fields are the same the parts of our brain which code for color vision fire at an another time and they say the red green red green difference. So, your brain is moving from black and white no difference to color difference and. So, there is your shifting from one to the other and you see movement you see. So, artists have learnt to hack it I am sure Monet did not know neuroscience it is just that again this is the sunset let me take off the color there is no it comes back again there you can see once you do that this shimmers this moves. So, like I said one that is like a you actually see simultaneously one that is like a white photo copy and other that is like a full color picture and keeps moving from one to the other. So, starting in the retina and continuing through the visual system our brain keeps information about the scenes color and it is brightness separately. So, the color blind part of our visual system the where stream something that we have in common with all mammals you know that dogs do not see color you know is used to locate things in space navigate environments etcetera the color system is more recent the what stream what is it for it is found only in the brains of primates apes upwards it helps us determine what this is is this an apple or is this a poisonous berry color is very important then that is different. So, it keeps going from one to the other. So, like I was saying the sun and the sky have exactly the same level of brightness luminescence making them invisible to the parts of the brain which located in space. So, while we can see the sun is hard to see exactly where it sets in the sky a lot of motion in Monet's paintings actually comes from this principle. Let me go to another picture you all know this picture this is the Mona Lisa most famous painting on earth the biggest mystery with this painting is whether the Mona Lisa is smiling or is she frowning look at the picture what happens again this movement here it you think sometimes she is smiling sometimes she is frowning why does that happen let me again do a little bit of manipulation I have manipulated the picture a little bit. So, I have taken out the shading here what do you see when you look at the Mona Lisa's eyes or at the background you see a smile because there is a shadow under her cheekbones right Leonardo used a very new technique which the Renaissance painters had just discovered it was called as Fumato technique which was the use of you know using dots to make the shadow instead of making a solid layer. So, when you do that when you look directly at her mouth her smile seems to vanish because you are basing it not on this, but only on this the human eye has a central vision which is very good and it is used to recognize details and another peripheral vision which is used to see shadows because again we want to see this, but I also want to see movement here because you know danger might be coming from there remember we were not all sitting in classrooms 40,000, 50,000 years back. So, we needed to see shadows moving but you also needed to see what was right there. So, these are two different systems and they work independently. So, artists have used these two different systems like you saw in that painting you know that impressionist painting is the most popular in the world why not really what is the thing about impressionist painting some of you are art students here gives an impression it does not give you the full details why is it. So, fascinating to the human brain it gives you an opportunity to guess this has actually linked to the brain's early warning system I will show you why let us go to the let me just go to the picture and then I will come back let me just show you this picture first what do you see here this is Dalai's painting on the slave market what do you see that is the bust of a volt air. So, the painting is actually called the bust of volt air or the slave market and your eyes go to this once you have discovered this it is no longer the slave market your face keeps your mind keeps going back to this thing why because you are there is a mystery there and once your brain has discovered the mystery it keeps going back have you ever had a some cut in your mouth your tongue keeps going there is this curious human brain is a very curious organ. So, once it discovers some mystery it will keep going there and coming back going there let me try and see whether let us know let us go to what is this is a long are you sure not just a dappled but your brain has to make sense of this remember you know where this comes from our brains are used human brains have had to for a long time make sense of whether that movement is just leaves moving or is it a leopard. So, we have had to develop this thing so the human brain is very good at sorting out mysteries actually looks for mysteries in our visual cues in our music etcetera. So, even in music you have something which is repetitive your mind gets bored you you miss a beat your mind just says wow you know and that is something that you do in art also when you when I am in painting you represent something which is you just represent the form you miss out the content and becomes that much more pleasing because you allow the mind to recreate to add in the missing portions and this is something that the magicians rely on the magicians will do something and they will let your minds make two plus two this lady is getting cut and he will do something and you think that actually the saw is going through when it is really not happening the slight of hand that you do for cut tricks your mind just adds up two plus two is equal to four because you expect that to happen when it does not happen your eyes and your mind does not register although your eye sees it. So, if you if you look at some of the TV magic you will find that is if you if you slow it down you can see what is happening, but at the real pace your mind is just papering over the. So, basically what I am saying is our brains do not see everything the world is too big too full of stimuli. So, the brain takes shortcuts constructing a picture of reality with relatively simple algorithms for what things are supposed to look like magicians capitalize on these rules tricks work only because magicians know at an intuitive level how we all look at the world emotion how our emotions emulated by works of art how brains attach aesthetic value to works of art. What is going on in our brain when we have a strong emotional response to seeing a painting you know artists have always asked you guys always asked that if I do this it really makes somebody feel wow this is a study that people did subjects were told to rate a painting one if they did not like it and four if they liked it a lot they looked at different paintings and gave ratings while sitting in an lying down in an MRI machine when they saw a painting they liked it evoked a different response in their brains we all know that is not it. This is for example is a expressionist painting by Max Ernst called Chinese restaurant and you like it there was a very strong response in multiple areas in the brain when people liked a painting each subject there in this experiment picked a different painting as something that they liked but what was fascinating is that some paintings made the subject feel you know that they liked it more so what happened was the meaning of the painting appear to be most important for emotional response in the brain for people who saw and so there was certain areas of the brain which are responsible for searching for meaning which seem to light up when they really liked a painting and let me show you the pictures this is your brain or not so these are some of the areas where most liked you know increased activity rather than least like and these are areas which are responsible for distinguishing between right and wrong these are areas which look at you know error detection these are areas which say wow when I have chocolate and these are the same areas which are stimulated when you look at a painting. This is more of the same these are some of the areas which are activated in response to aesthetic experience we would not go into this this was made for a slightly you know more neuroscience audience let me go past it and music and poetry commonly reported response to listening to music of poetry is Shiva you had a tingle down the spine some people experience a lump in the throat or goose pimples or they get tears now the emotional responses to music appear to occur in areas that integrate memory emotions and cognitions and these are also the areas which are involved in play in bonding in maternal bonding etcetera. So it is not surprising that when you listen to music you get the same kind of I am safe or I am happy let me go past this too much neuro biology here but imagine you are dozing with a magazine on your lap suddenly a fly lands you so what you do you grab one magazine and swat it but what was going on in your mind before you did that and what happens just after you do that now why am I talking about this because most of the time our creation is done when do we do our creation when our minds are active or when our minds are passive actually both what do you mean but most of the time when you are doing creation you are just lying down what is called brown study is not it and then suddenly you get an a reaction so let us let us examine what happens there when the mind is not working you know when people are daydreaming we are always taught that daydreaming is bad and people who daydream a lot are procrastinating they are lazy they are not doing their work etcetera. So what people did you know there have been some people who been working on the neuro biology of daydreaming so they said when the brain is not doing anything you just lie in a scanner do not do anything and what they expected was the activity in the brain would be the least what they found was fascinatingly wrong that when your brain is not doing anything it is the most active and if then your brain is asked to do something you woken up from your then the brain has to take activity from this and devoted to something else you know it is almost as if when you are doing nothing parts of your brain are gossiping with each other and sharing information and this is called the default mode network I will let me go to these are some of the areas which are very active when you are doing nothing and I will come back and try and tell you why I brought this up it is like people gossiping this is a Norman Rockville painting of people you know a rumour gossip going coming back to the same person this slide is out of place neuroscience in theatre I will come back to it the other part that I wanted to talk about neuro biology was about mirror neurons this is something that you know if you get a monkey to do a particular activity say take a banana and you put a electrode in the brain you can find out which area of the brain is firing take banana you know has one part of the brain working now if you give the monkey or more better still you give another monkey a banana this monkey is take banana part of the brain starts firing you know it is almost as if when I am seeing you do something same area in my brain starts mirroring your activity and this is very important in us human beings understanding each other how do I understand you how do I understand that you are feeling bored right now or that you are smiling that you know you are you are have amusement and I can understand your amusement I can you know because as soon as you are smiling my smiling areas in the brain also get turned on so it is like a mirror and this is something that we learn to do as children you know this is this is a famous experiment that somebody did you know you do this to a child very small child you know not children like us very very small and the child will do it back to you do this child will do that back to you and this is monkey see monkey do and we have areas in this in the brain which are monkey see monkey do areas which allow us to understand other human beings to understand these are these are called mirror neurons and this is also very important when you create art because when you see something somebody has done you are also able to understand that you see a picture of Goya as somebody is you know tearing off somebody is limb you viscerally feel the pain yourself you know in your mind and that is because artists have learnt to utilize this it is neuroscientists are only now learning why the artists have done it let me and this is something that we do in theatre you know when you see Othello killing his wife and then say oh my god what have I done you know you feel the oh my god these are these are some of the mirror neurons which light up when you appreciate music and so that is how art evokes emotion in you because somebody has put his emotionality into something and you are able to appreciate somebody else's emotion through this something so it is this significant evidence that humans have an auditory mirror neuron system for example that responds both when you perform actions and when we hear the sounds of these actions being performed so if there is a musician and he sees the other musician playing you immediately are able to to do that in your mind as a non musician when I hear the sounds being played I my emotional areas resonate at that level I mean to give you an example anybody who drives cars is used to driving a car you are sitting in the non driver's seat and the other person is driving you will see immediately the other guy breaks your foot also goes down onto the break you know it is something like that this is where culture comes in when the Beatles were originally asked about Ravishankar's sitar they said one of them I forget whom they said it sounds like a strangled cat but then they came to India sat with Ravishankar Jojarasen sat with Ravishankar and they became great devotees similarly dances from the London royal ballet were shown you have seen capoeira the martial art dance form they were shown each other's forms and the mirror neurons worked better when they were shown each other's forms and worked less when they were shown somebody else's form so culture also has a lot to do with it now what next so basically do not show a cow your painting the cow does not share your mirror neurons some of the difficulties that we have in emotional significance in aesthetic value so aesthetic value is also influenced by context so if I see a Hussein a lot of it is also related to the fact that I know it is a Hussein emotional significance in aesthetic value a tin was sold for 124,000 euros at Sotheby's on May 2007 containing this okay so aesthetic value strongly influenced by contact so behavioral studies show that presenting artworks accompanied with titles texts and other forms of cognitive information can significantly influence an observer's reported evaluation of the artwork in fact this is a study that they did they showed rembrandt's and fake rembrandt's okay and people were told this is a real rembrandt this is a fake rembrandt sometimes they were told the opposite for a real rembrandt they were told fake and for a fake they were told real and basically to cut a long story short the human brain reacts much better when you are told this is a real rembrandt even when you are seeing a real rembrandt when you are told a fake it is a not good okay let me go pass this because this is a very long lecture so I will let us come to creativity where is creativity creativity is everywhere in the brain you know it would be nice to say creativity occurs here but it is probably not it is not monolithic it is a culmination of many processes you know there used to be a myth that the right brain does something and left brain does something and there are right brainers who think differently and left brainers who think differently what we now understand is there is no such thing you know and the right and the left have to work together to solve mathematical algorithms and the right and the left have to work together to create amorphous works of art let me not go okay imagination is derived from imagery by transformation of basic imagery you know imagination what is imagination you know you have a unicorn you have a horse with with a with a with a twisted horn you know that is imagination how do you put these things together so you have to use imagery which exists and modify it so imagination involves three steps one is take a primary representation and imagine that has truth relations to the outside world this is a girl no doubt about it so my mind takes a girl and then this is a goldfish right these exist then what my mind does is it makes copies of these you know it for you guys it will be easy just cut and paste so you take that and you paste it in another part of your mind so then make a copy of this primary representation which is a second order representation then what it does is that you knock off parts introduce some change to the second order representation playing with its truth relationships to the outside world but not so much that it becomes totally ununderstandable and then put the two together so what do you get you get this okay so this is something that when you are creating you do unthinkingly but what neuroscientists are now doing is able to track this process of how creativity occurs for example development of imagination is something that does not exist in very young children and you have to go through pretend play to learn how to imagine okay and some people are not able to imagine and these are disorders of that that we face you know for example children who are autistic are not able to intimately relate to children or adults because you have to do pretend they are able to play with inanimate objects because they lack the ability to do this pretend thing they lack the ability to actually mirror neuron you know to imagine what the other person is thinking you do not have to imagine what a car is thinking okay let us go past this because okay let me deal with this you know sometimes most creators will tell you that the best flash of genius actually came and they were lying they are doing nothing something flashes you know this is this poem called the daffodils written by Wordsworth and Wordsworth said that it flashed upon his inward eye while he was lying there doing nothing watching the clouds go by suddenly it arose in his mind and boredom has always been blamed but boredom actually makes us think when immersed in monotony we automatically lapse into what is called mind wandering. Now it has always been thought as something bad you know Sigmund Freud said it was infantile thinking baby like thinking and therefore bad you know parents throughout history have said you should not be sitting and letting your mind wander it turns out when people are engaged in mind wandering it is a large proportion of your time that you spend mind wandering you know almost 50% of the time your mind is wandering right what is happening inside the brain when the mind wanders so what happens is huge proportion of the brain is active when the mind is wandering remember I showed you those the picture of the default mode network that is when the brain is actually talking to you know the parts of the brain are happily gossiping with each other you know picking up as to what did I know what do I know what have you learnt what are you saying and this is not in conscious in consciousness as people have said genius occurs only from a prepared mind you if you have not done a lot of perspiration before you are not going to get that certain idea you know it does not come from the sky you have to have done a lot of work and then go to sleep so the best way to actually create is think a lot about what you are going to do and then go off to sleep because if you have a solution you if you are trying to find a solution very hard you will find that you cannot find the solution 99.9% of the time you cannot especially when you have a thing that you have to deliver you have to give your assignment in you will find you just cannot do it and you are getting more anxious and anxious and anxious but you cannot do it and that is because of this let me just take you to how boredom makes you think your two examples one is of course the Eureka example of who was it yes then there is this other example of a guy called Friedrich von Kekeule was a chemist who was working on this whole thing of carbon atoms you know carbon he through all these things he decided that there have to be six atoms but how do six atoms fit together and he worked and he worked and he worked and he tried different kinds of things just could not put them together then he went off to sleep and in his dream he saw one snake swallowing another snake and he woke up and said wow that is it it is a ring you know and that is how creativity that is how things happen.