Seed Magazine recently published this first-person account of a cognitive neuroscientist's successful appearance on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
The concept of priming -- just talking, in hopes of using the brain's own stream of consciousness babbling to uncover unexpected links and memory triggers -- was new to me. I gave it a test-drive today, and found it really can be a useful memory aid.
I also found his conscious use of intuition as a problem-solving tool fascinating. Given the question, "What was the first product featured in the Sears and Roebuck catalog?" would I have been willing to risk $50,000 on a mental picture of a watch that flashed through my thoughts, unbidden and unexplained, before the multiple choice answers were revealed?
