Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In insight problem solving solutions with AHA! experience have been assumed to be the consequence of restructuring ofa problem which usually takes place shortly before the solution. However, evidence from priming studies suggests thatsolutions with AHA! are not spontaneously generated during the solution process but already relate to prior subliminalprocessing. We test this hypothesis by conducting an fMRI study using a modified compound remote associates paradigmwhich incorporates semantic priming. We observe stronger brain activity in bilateral anterior insulae already shortly aftertrial onset in problems that were later solved with than without AHA!. This early activity was independent of semanticpriming but may be related to other lexical properties of attended words helping to reduce the amount of solutions to lookfor. In contrast, there was more brain activity in bilateral anterior insulae during solutions that were solved without thanwith AHA!. This timing (after trial start / during solution) x solution experience (with / without AHA!) interaction wassignificant. The results suggest that a) solutions accompanied with AHA! relate to early solution-relevant processing andb) both solution experiences differ in timing when solution-relevant processing takes place. In this context, we discuss thepotential role of the anterior insula as part of the salience network involved in problem-solving by allocating attentionalresources.