Not all connections are equal, in terms of yielding creative insights. More obvious mental connections and associations44—as when we associate a table and a chair—are more commonplace and tend to occur in the brain’s left hemisphere, notes the neurology professor John Kounios of Drexel University. But remote associations—“like when we think of ‘table’ and the idea of ‘under the table’”—require more of a neural reach. The brain’s right hemisphere, made up of cells
