| The concept of insight was put forward by Kohler in 1977, which challenged the dominant "try-error" learning theory, and revealed that in problem solving, the process can be either mutant or gradual. Of course, the introduction of insight has profound significance, because insight is the basis of human creative thinking. The study of insight has been the core issue of researchers since the concept was put forward and the classic insight problems include double rope problem, nine dot problem, candle problem, six matches task, etc. Generally, there are three distinct characteristics of insight problem. First, there is no need to learn specific knowledge when solving insight problems; second, when solving insight problems, it is natural to confront with barrier, which is also the key to solve the problem; third, all the puzzle will be resolved once the barrier is broken, following the strong emotional feeling called "Aha!"In recent years, researchers have got a clearer understanding of the neural mechanisms of insight via brain imaging technology, and employed new insightful problems to overcome the limitations of classic insight problem. For instance, the compound remote association task (pine, crab, sauce â†' pineapple,crab apple, applesauce) (Bodewen, 2003,2005; Mark Jung-Beeman,2004), the riddle task(His position went up because his partner’s position went downâ†'See-saw) (Luo & Knoblich,2007; Luo et al.,2004b; Mai et al.,2004), and the puzzle task(有口难言you kou nan yanâ†' ĺ“‘yα) (J. Qiu et al., 2010; J. Qiu et al.,2008; Jiang Qiu et al.,2006). Additionally, some researchers use drawing tasks (Wills et al.,2000) and magic (Danek et al.,2014) to investigate insight. In the present study, we employed an updated paradigm in the study of Ludmer(R. Ludmer et al.,2011) to investigate the neural mechanisms of insight during the process of camouflage image recognition.In order to maintain the validity of experimental materials, we made a detailed preparation in material search and selection. In experiment 1, camouflage images and solution pictures (true vs. false) would appear on the screen simultaneously to induce insightful experience, and the participants are required to rate the degree of surprise of each pictures. The results showed that there are insightful experience with the employment of the paradigm (the ratio of problems that can induce insight is 80.9%, while the ratio of problems that can induce noninsight is 88.9%).The data suggested that there were no significant differences in the reaction time between insight condition(M=2375ms,SD=579ms) and noninsight condition (M=2573ms,SD=645ms), t (33)=-2.146, p>0.01; whereas there were significant differences in surprise rating between insight condition (M-2.72, SD=0.52) and noninsight condition (M=1.15, SD=0.75). In conclusion, the results showed that insight occurred with strong feelings of surprise, which would not happen in noninsight situation.Through experiment 1, we found that the match of camouflage image and clear picture can induce insightful experience. In experiment 2, in order to certify the purity of cognitive components during fMRI investigation, we maintained this match but added another camouflage image. There were two conditions in the experiment:insight condition in which the sequence of pictures were camouflage image-solution image-camouflage image; noninsight condition in which the sequence of pictures were solution imageâ†' camouflage imageâ†' camouflage image). The fMRI data showed significant activations at Brodmann area (BA) 10 in the right middle frontal cortex, BA 6 in the left paracentral lobule, bilateral cingulate gyrus in the limbic lobe, and bilateral caudate body, when compared insight condition with noninsight condition. However, there were no activation when compared noninsight condition with insight condition The results suggested that the bilateral body of caudate is responsible for emotional experience of insight; the BA 6 is associated with the inhibition of initial representation of camouflage image and conflict monitoring in breaking mental impasse; the right BA 10 is involved in the generation of novel rules. These findings might advance our understanding on neural mechanisms of insight with camouflage image. |
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