How crosstalk creates vision-related eureka moments

The discussion begins with a familiar and defensible characterization of th e eureka moment, according to which it is the unexpected product of separat e and often seemingly incompatible perspectives. The principal aim of the d iscussion is to explain how, so characterized, vision-related eureka moment s can occur. To fulfill this aim, the discussion employs a notion of crosst alk, in which cognitive interference slightly increases as a result of the creative thinker's considerable, albeit only partly successful, pre-eureka cognitive effort. Such crosstalk, it is suggested, is likely to occur when top-down visual imaging repeatedly stimulates pyramidal cells closely appos ed to others that, although simultaneously active, are part of bottom-up vi sual perception that is initially cognitively unrelated to such imaging. It is further suggested that local circuitry, in the form of inhibitory inter neurons, can synchronize cells associated with these initially separate pro cesses, thus causing subsequent perceptual patterns to be subtly modified b y pre-eureka problem-solving imagery. This modification, it is claimed, may help explain the unexpected shift in visual perception that accompanies th e creative thinker's eureka moment, a shift that can improve the thinker's subsequent understanding of the relevance of information to a problem's sol ution.