Quote...

I just heard this on the radio (702)

Chris Smith, the naked scientist:

The brain sacrifices originality for expertise.

Apropos...

ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2011) — Are we on the verge of being able to stimulate the brain to see the world anew -- an electric thinking cap? Research by Richard Chi and Allan Snyder from the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney suggests that this could be the case.

They found that participants who received electrical stimulation of the anterior temporal lobes were three times as likely to reach the fresh insight necessary to solve a difficult, unfamiliar problem than those in the control group. The study published on February 2 in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

According to the authors, our propensity to rigidly apply strategies and insights that have had previous success is a major bottleneck to making creative leaps in solving new problems. There is normally a cognitive tradeoff between the necessity of being fast at the familiar on one hand and being receptive to novelty on the other.

Sorry but my expertise at posting waffles does not allow for an original reply.

apparently Einstein's brain had some differences to the brain structures of the common herd of humanity, so yes i agree, thinking according to old patterns creates these "bottlenecks", and he was an "outside the box" thinker. I can see where this will lead though: we'll all have a chip in the brain one day prompting certain lobes and nodes to be more active than others... where it will lead is the scary bit.

(btw, those waffles are stimulating my appetite in a Pavlovian way)

I just stuck my phone charger up my nostril, and had an epiphany.

Pancakes are clearly better.

Say you accidentally lock yourself in the loo.  Would concerned family and friends be able to keep you from starving by sliding waffles under the door? No! only pancakes will do the job.

 Could it make us all Grand Masters? 

good one Roopi, but apparently they do brain surgery up your nostrils these days, so go easy!! Yeah i am in a kind of 'pancake mood' myself today...