Things sometimes just come to us

"...The neural processes underlying that which we call creativity have nothing to do with rationality. That is to say, if we look at how the brain generates creativity, we will see that it is not a rational process at all, creativity is not born out of reasoning.

Let us think again of our motor tapes in the basal ganglia. I should like to suggest to you that these nuclei do not always wait for a tape to be called up for use by the thalamocortical system, the self....In fact, the activity in the basal ganglia is running all the time, playing motor patterns and snippets of motor patterns amongst and between themselves - and because of the odd, re-entrant inhibitory connectivity amongst and between these nuclei, they seem to act as a continuous, random, motor pattern noise generator.

Here and there, a pattern or portion of a pattern escapes, without its apparent emotional counterpart, into the context of the thalamocortical system.

"And suddenly, " Llinas concludes, "you hear a song in your head or out of seemingly nowhere find yourself anxious to play tennis. Things sometimes just come to us."

Quote from 'I of the Vortex' by Llinas, a neuroscientist at New York University.

From the book 'Musicophilia' by Oliver Sacks, Page 41

Amazon review by my friend Souvik Mitra: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2KGV83UNZ1JRB/ref=cm_aya_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1400040817#wasThisHelpful