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week 4

The Eureka Hunt by Jonah Lehrer

“The Eureka Hunt” by Jonah Lehrer discusses the process of how and where your brain has insights that can help you survive or solve a word puzzle. The article goes into detail about how this ‘Aha!’ moment takes place in the right hemisphere of the brain and the anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG) is active just before the person has an insight. There are a few scientists who talk about their scientific findings with studying how, when and where these insights take place in a factual and humorous way, almost to give the audience their own ‘eureka’ moment while reading.

The author ties the passage together with beginning and ending it with the story of the fire-fighter, Wag Dodge, who survived a wild-fire with a sudden insight on how to escape it. That story gets the reader’s attention from the start and it was a real life scenario to Segway into the rest if the article, making the passage relevant to the reader. Lehrer keeps the article fun by including those 3 drawings and by adding humor into the mix. Also, Lehrer adds many daily experiences such as explaining why we get our best ideas while taking a shower or when we’re half asleep and why when we focus on a problem too much we’re actually preventing an insight from happening. The entertainment part keep sus reading and has the audience imagine themselves as a part of the article and the science is detailed, but explained well through examples and gives the readers insight about their own brian and consciousness while they think.




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