Neuroscientists discover how to achieve ‘flow’ state and what the brain does to enable it
- A study of jazz guitarists finds common factors in how they achieved a flow state and how their brains enable flow to arise more easily
Many of us are familiar with that feeling of being “in the zone”, when we are so immersed in an activity – whether playing a video game, writing, painting or playing an instrument – that our actions seem to happen automatically, without any guidance from our conscious mind.
Researchers have studied this phenomenon since the 1970s, notably the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the term “flow” to describe it.
Csikszentmihalyi brought the idea into public consciousness in 1990 with his bestselling book Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience, which has since become almost required reading for creative communities across the globe.
Csikszentmihalyi’s experiments were based on examining his subjects’ descriptions of what they felt while experiencing flow. They did not aim to – and, in fact, could not – tell us anything about the mechanical workings of the brain during the flow episodes.
