Solving Puzzles with Neural Creativity

The Aha Moment
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-91170-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 274 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

This book takes an in-depth look at the tradition of solving puzzles and considers the psychological cause and effect of the ‘Aha moment’: that familiar flash of sudden insight. Everyone loves a good puzzle, but why is this so? Is it because puzzles provide a form of escapism from the routines of daily life? Or do they reveal something fundamental or perhaps even primal about human cognition and consciousness?

In Solving Puzzles with Neural Creativity, Marcel Danesi considers the importance of puzzles to the study of mind and culture and explores how they stimulate creative regions of the brain. Danesi explores the history of classic puzzles across time and cultural space and examines the psychological link between puzzle solving and mental imagery and visualization. He takes an in-depth look at the difference between puzzles and games based on systematic reasoning, as well as the the role of language meaning and structure in the solving of riddles. Overall, the book puts forward the idea that puzzles provide cognitive data on how the brain might function when processing information, via the the neurocircuitry that supports creativity.

Examining all kinds of puzzles including verbal, nonverbal and mathematical, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience and anthropology.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Danesi, Marcel

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Biologische Psychologie, Neuropsychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Sport | Tourismus | Freizeit Hobbies & Spiele

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction  1. Puzzles, riddles, games  2. Scalar analysis  3. Riddles  4. Word puzzles and games  5. Logic puzzles and games  6. Mathematical puzzles and games  7. Spatial puzzles and games  8. Games  9. Solving puzzles  Conclusion  Index

Über Autor(innen)

Marcel Danesi is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Before retirement he directed the Program in Semiotics and Communication Theory at Victoria College at the same university. He was editor-in-chief of Semiotica for two decades. He has also founded a research center in cognitive mathematics at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematics, along with various cognitive scientists, called the CogSci Center. He has published extensively in the field of enigmatology (the science of puzzles).