The hippocampus, traditionally known as the brain's memory center for past events, is also crucial for imagination. It works by associating and reassembling stored information in novel ways to construct future scenarios you haven't experienced.

A study of art students found that long-term creative success was predicted not by skill or confidence, but by the tendency to spend more time exploring objects and defining the "problem" of their drawing. True creativity emerges from deeply understanding the situation itself before attempting a solution.

Breakthroughs often occur in routine environments like the shower or during a walk. These activities promote what psychologists call "divergent thinking," where the relaxed mind makes novel connections. This scientific process can be intentionally triggered to solve complex problems and foster creativity.

The idea of a single 'general intelligence' or IQ is misleading because key cognitive abilities exist in a trade-off. For instance, the capacity for broad exploration (finding new solutions) is in tension with the capacity for exploitation (efficiently executing known tasks), which schools and IQ tests primarily measure.

Contrary to intuition, many leading animators at Pixar have aphantasia (the inability to visualize mentally). The hypothesis is that this 'disadvantage' forces them to engage more deeply with the physical act of drawing and observation to understand form, leading to superior skill.

Play triggers the brainstem to release self-made opioids. This specific chemical state doesn't numb the prefrontal cortex but actually makes it 'smarter'—enhancing its ability to explore different outcomes and contingencies in a flexible way, which is key for creative problem-solving.

Alcohol enhances creative, lateral thinking by relaxing the prefrontal cortex (PFC), our brain's executive function center. This state mimics the less-filtered, highly creative mind of a child, allowing for novel connections. The effect peaks around a 0.08 blood alcohol content, suggesting a specific, functional use for innovation.

Improving imagination is less like a painter adding to a blank canvas and more like a sculptor removing material. The primary task is to forget expected answers and consensus reality. This subtractive process uncovers the truly novel ideas that are otherwise obscured by convention.

Just as a blind person's visual cortex is repurposed for heightened hearing and touch, savantism might be an extreme case of this principle. An individual may develop superhuman skills by allocating a disproportionate amount of neural resources to one area, often at the cost of others like social skills.