Besides the finding on cortical involvement of the left anterior middle temporal gyrus (aMTG), here we showed for the first time robust subcortical activity changes related to insightful problem solving in the bilateral thalamus, hippocampus, and the dopaminergic midbrain comprising ventral tegmental area (VTA), nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and caudate nucleus. They were supposed to press a button as soon as they felt confident about their solution without further revision, allowing us to capture the exact event of Aha!‐moment. During this task, subjects were exposed to word triplets and instructed to find a solution word being associated with all the three given words. To investigate those subcortical contributions to insight, we employed ultra‐high‐field 7 T fMRI during a German Version of the RAT. Considering the strong affective components of Aha!‐moments, as manifested in the subjectively experienced feeling of relief following the sudden emergence of the solution of the problem without any conscious forewarning, we hypothesized the subcortical dopaminergic reward network to be critically engaged during Aha. Finding insightful solutions during a remote associates task (RAT) was found to elicit specific cortical activity changes.
Insightful problem solving tasks were shown to be a valid method for investigating one subcomponent of creativity: the Aha!‐moment. However, the exact neural processes underlying creative problem solving remain unclear. Finding creative solutions to difficult problems is a fundamental aspect of human culture and a skill highly needed.
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