Intuition, insight, and the right hemisphere: Emergence of higher sociocognitive functions

Abstract

Intuition is the ability to understand immediately without conscious reasoning and is sometimes explained as a 'gut feeling' about the rightness or wrongness of a person, place, situation, temporal episode or object. In contrast, insight is the capacity to gain accurate and a deep understanding of a problem and it is often associated with movement beyond existing paradigms. Examples include Darwin, Einstein and Freud's theories of natural selection, relativity, or the unconscious; respectively. Many cultures name these concepts and acknowledge their value, and insight is recognized as particularly characteristic of eminent achievements in the arts, sciences and politics. Considerable data suggests that these two concepts are more related than distinct, and that a more distributed intuitive network may feed into a predominately right hemispheric insight-based functional neuronal architecture. The preparation and incubation stages of insight may rely on the incorporation of domain-specific automatized expertise schema associated with intuition. In this manuscript the neural networks associated with intuition and insight are reviewed. Case studies of anomalous subjects with ability-achievement discrepancies are summarized. This theoretical review proposes the prospect that atypical localization of cognitive modules may enhance intuitive and insightful functions and thereby explain individual achievement beyond that expected by conventionally measured intelligence tests. A model and theory of intuition and insight's neuroanatomical basis is proposed which could be used as a starting point for future research and better understanding of the nature of these two distinctly human and highly complex poorly understood abilities.

Keywords: House–Tree–Person; IQ threshold theory; achievement–ability discrepancy; anomalous functions; atypical localization of cognitive functions; clinical intuition; clinical psychology; crossed aphasia; crosslinguistic fluency; drawings; emergent properties; functional capacity; insight; intuition; inverse cognitive modeling; nonverbal decoding; nonverbal sequencing; right hemisphere dominance; specialization; unconscious and conscious processes; visual gesture lexicon.

Figure 1

A long-term and slow route to creative insight. Copyright © 1995, The MIT Press. Adapted from Csikszentmihalyi M, Sawyer K. Creative insight: The social dimension of a solitary moment. In: Sternberg RJ, Davidson JE, editors. The Nature of Insight. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press; 1995. p. 329–363.

Figure 2

Example of a Markovian grammar. Grammatical strings include XV; TLV; TLTPPRJ; XTRLTRJ. Copyright © 2000, American Psychological Association. Adapted from Lieberman MD. Intuition: A social cognitive neuroscience approach. Psychol Bull. 2000;126:109–137.

Figure 3

In the top picture, the four cards used as cues in the Weather Prediction task are depicted. Each card was associated with each possible outcome with a fixed probability. In the table is the probability structure of the task. For each pattern, each card could be present (1) or absent (0). The all-present (1111) and all-absent (0000) patterns were never used. The overall probability of rain, given by summing P (Pattern) *P (rain/pattern) for all patterns, is 50%. Please note that the weather prediction task is not at all like a “video-gambling task” since there is a highly complex rule-governed underlying pattern of sequences that can be used to optimize performance much like natural patterns in the external world. Copyright © 2002, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Gluck MA, Shohamy D, Myers C. How do people solve the ‘weather prediction’ task?: Individual variability in strategies for probabilistic category learning. Learn Memory. 2002;9:408–418.

Figure 4

The parallel organization of functionally segregrated circuits linking the basal ganglia and cortex. The orbitofrontal cortex and basal ganglia are primary constituents of Lieberman’s automatic X-system associated with the skilled performance and expertise used in intuitive processes. The ventral semantic stream twists through the basal ganglia’s external capsule linking the posterior occipitotemporal cortex with the lateral prefrontal cortex associated with the reflective C-system. Specifically, the right anterior superior temporal gyrus is uniquely associated with insight and the caudate is associated with intuition. In this model the caudate nucleus provides the primary means by which these basal ganglia-dependent (green) and cortical systems (blue) can interact and effectively influence each other. Copyright © 1986. Alexander GE, DeLong MR, Strick PL. Parallel organization of functionally segregated circuits linking basal ganglia and cortex. Annu Rev Neurosci. 1986;9:357–381.

Figure 5

Although research suggests that presented insight problems do indeed rely on more lateralized right hemispheric processes – the question as to whether longer-term revolutionary insights do as well is open to conjecture and is purely speculative. However, the convergent theme that right hemispheric dominance could accentuate the development of revolutionary insights is borne out by the analysis of atypical subjects and our discussions of three of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century. For example, Freud developed his theory of the unconscious through uncanny observations about socioemotional functions in his patients and biographers have questioned question whether Einstein had some form of developmental dyslexia (eg, see Heilman for discussions of deep dyslexia). Finally, Darwin developed his theory of natural selection through the integration of huge volumes of information derived from his drawings of different species. Another timely and interesting trend was that this year alone in 2009 five of thirteen new Nobel Laureates were women, the largest number to ever join the ranks in a single year. Copyright © 2009. Adapted and redrawn from Topolinski S, Strack F. The architecture of intuition: Fluency and affect determine intuitive judgments of semantic and visual coherence and judgments of grammaticality in artificial grammar learning. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2009;138:39–63.

Figure 6

Neural correlates of the C-system and the X-system displayed on a canonical brain rendering from side (A) and bottom (B) views. C-system regions displayed are the lateral prefrontal cortex (C1), hippocampus and medial temporal lobe (C2), and the posterior parietal cortex (C3). X-system regions displayed are the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (X1), nucleus accumbens of the basal ganglia (X2), amygdala (X3) and the lateral temporal cortex (X4). Please note that the hippocampus, nucleus accumbens and amygdala are displayed on the cortical surface for the sake of clarity. Copyright © 2004, American Psychological Association. Adapted from Lieberman MD, Jarcho JM, Satpute AB. Evidence-based and intuition-based self-knowledge: An fMRI study. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2004;87:421–435.

Figure 7

Archetypal configuration of specific co-localized cognitive modules in normally represented lateralization of functions subjects. In Marien and colleagues’ study of crossed aphasics with singular right hemisphere lesions a secondary analysis was undertaken. Buccofacial praxis was correlated with limb praxis (r = 0.41, P < 0.01) and writing (r = 0.39, P < 0.05). Limb praxis was correlated with writing (r = 0.67, P < 0.001) and visuospatial functions (r = 0.40, P < 0.05). Finally, visuospatial functions were correlated with constructional praxis (r = 0.35, P < 0.05). Copyright © 1991. Adapted with permission from Fischer RS, Alexander MP, Gabriel C, Gould E, Milione J. Reversed lateralization of cognitive functions in right-handers: Exceptions to classical aphasiology. Brain. 1991;114:245–261.

Figure 8

Projective drawings and personality inventory assessment as concordant examples of the relationship between intuition and insight in clinical psychology. Traditionally these projective tests have been used to characterize pathology but increasingly they are also being used to study normal developmental processes and healthy adaptation as in the positive psychology movement. Drawings are particularly apt to tap right hemispheric processes and notions of self, psychodynamic processes,– and as hypothesized in this article links between conscious and unconscious mind. Copyright © 1997. From EH Hammer, Advances in Projective Drawing Interpretation, 1997. Courtesy of Charles C.Thomas Publisher, Ltd., Springfield, Illinois. Drawing A is adapted from Figure 2–26 on page 34. Drawing B is adapted from Figure 5–7 on page 96. Drawing C is adapted from Figure 2–16 on page 25.