You're Smarter When You're Horizontal

Ant writes "According to this Discovery Channel article, people are smarter and more creative lying down than standing up. Darren Lipnicki, a researcher from the school of psychology at the Australian National University (ANU) believes this helps to explain Archimedes' eureka moment. He found that people solve anagrams more quickly when they are on their backs than on their feet. His finding relates to the difference in brain chemistry, specifically the release of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, when lying down or standing up. While noradrenaline is normally associated with cognitive ability and attention, it is also believed to impair creative thinking. And less is released while lying down. (Seen on Shacknews)."

Comments

Re:Odd...

[Aeternal]

I suspect that 'thinking' in the way implied here (problem solving, planning) was not required for day to day cave person type activities; throwing a straight spear, remembering where that nice plant grows, where that tasty female/male cave person hangs out.

Cave person may well have spent lying down time chilling and pondering life, the universe and everything.

Hmm...

[vitaly.friedman]

I am not an arrogant person. And I do respect the opinions of other people. But I never manage to concentrate and make reasonable decisions, being in a horizontal position. And by the way, I always read such articles with doubts and skepticism: all people are different and I hate it when some scientists try to find a common principle which is typical for the whole human kind.

Vitaly Friedman,
Saarbruecken, Germany,
vitaly.friedman

Take that lying down

[Doc Ruby]

What's the mystery of Archimedes' "eureka" moment? He was asked to tell whether a king's crown was really gold, or fake. All anyone else could do was weigh it, and it weighed the right amount. When Archimedes sat in a tub, it overflowed, and he realized he could measure the complex volume, and therefore the density, of the crown. Excited, he ran naked through the streets, shouting "eureka" (I've got it!) through the town.

It seems unlikely that he was any more supine in the tub than he'd been while sleeping that morning. The key to his insight was in the overflowing, not in any postural biochemical enhancement.