Eureka!

Bauer et al, Human Brain Mapping, 2015

The brain regions activated when a participant learned about an animal's habitat, left, and its diet, right.

When a cartoon character has an idea, a light bulb illuminates above his head—a metaphor for how a new thought just seems to click into existence in the human brain. Now neuroscientists at Carnegie Mellon University have captured the brain's "eureka" moment on film for the first time, according to a study published recently in Human Brain Mapping.

The researchers taught 16 participants facts about the diet and habitat of eight extinct animals. While the participants learned, researchers took images of their brains using an fMRI. When a computer program analyzed the results, the researchers found that the brains of each participant activated in the same areas when learning each piece of new information, but each extinct animal looked different in participants' brains—each had a unique "activation signature," a telltale combination of activated brain regions.