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Abstract The research presented in this paper investigated the changes that occur in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) when new ideas are introduced during engineering design. Undergraduate and graduate engineering students (n = 25) were outfitted with a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) headband. Students were asked to design a personal entertainment system while thinking aloud. New ideas were timestamped with the fNIRS data across 48 channels grouped into eight regions within the PFC. The data were preprocessed using temporal derivative distribution repair motion correction, finite impulse response bandpass filter, and the modified beer-lambert law to convert optical density into hemoglobin concentration. Baseline neurocognitive activation and physiological noise were removed. The study found a significant decrease in oxygenated hemoglobin in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and a subregion of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex when new ideas were introduced during design. This finding begins to provide a neurocognitive signature of what a new idea looks like as it arises in the brain. This could be used to develop tools and techniques to inhibit this brain region or use this insight to predict when designers will experience a new idea based on their neural activation. 

In this paper, we explored changes in brain states over time while designers were generating concepts. Participants either used morphological analysis or TRIZ to develop a design concept for two design tasks. While designing, participants’ brain activation in their prefrontal cortex (PFC) was monitored with a functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy machine. To identify variation in brain states, we analyzed changes in brain networks. Using k-mean clustering to classify brain networks for each task revealed four brain network patterns. While using morphological analysis, the occurrence of each pattern was similar along the design steps. For TRIZ, some brain states dominated depending on the design step. Drain states changes suggests that designers alternate engaging certain subregions of the PFC. This approach to studying brain behavior provides a more granular understanding of the evolution of design brain states over time. Findings add to the growing body of research exploring design neurocognition. 

The research presented in this paper tested whether drawing concept maps changes how engineering students construct design problem statements and whether these differences are observable in their brains. The process of identifying and constructing problem statements is a critical step in engineering design. Concept mapping has the potential to expand the problem space that students explore through the attention given to the relationship between concepts. It helps integrate existing knowledge in new ways. Engineering students (n=66) were asked to construct a problem statement to improve mobility on campus. Half of these students were randomly chosen to first receive instructions about how to develop a concept map and were asked to draw a concept map about mobility systems on campus. The semantic similarity of concepts in the students’ problem statements, the length of their problem statements, and their neurocognition when developing their statements were measured. The results indicated that students who were asked to first draw concept maps produced a more diverse problem statement with less semantically similar words. The students who first developed concept maps also produce significantly longer problem statements. Concept mapping changed students’ neurocognition. The students who used concept mapping elicited less cognitive activation in their left prefrontal cortex (PFC) and more concentrated activation in their right PFC. The right PFC is generally associated with divergent thinking and the left PFC is generally associated with convergent and analytical thinking. These results provide new insight into how educational interventions, like concept mapping, can change students’ cognition and neurocognition. Better understanding how concept maps, and other tools, help students approach complex problems and the associated changes that occur in their brain can lay the groundwork for novel advances in engineering education that support new tools and pedagogy development for design. 

Challenges associated with the design and construction of the built environment are complex. Students need training to help them deal with this complexity and to help them explore and reframe problems early during project planning and design. Concept maps provide a visual representation of complex information and the relationships between this information. The research presented in this paper tested whether priming students to think in systems by asking them to draw concept maps changes how they construct problem statements. In total, 40 engineering students participated in the study. Half were asked to draw a concept map before constructing a problem statement about how to improve mobility systems around campus. The cognitive effort (i.e., time and words) students spent on the task and the number of unique system elements included in their problem statement were measured. Students that received the concept mapping intervention spent significantly more time thinking about the problem, developed longer problem statements, and included more unique elements of systems. These findings suggest using concept mapping can aid students’ conceptualization of complex problems. 

Neuroimaging provides a relatively new approach for advancing engineering education by exploring changes in neurocognition from educational interventions. The purpose of the research described in this paper is to present the results of a preliminary study that measured students’ neurocognition while concept mapping. Engineering design is an iterative process of exploring both the problem and solution spaces. To aid students in exploring these spaces, half of the 66 engineering students who participated in the study were first asked to develop a concept map and then construct a design problem statement. The concept mapping activity significantly reduced neurocognitive activation in the students’ left prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to students who did not receive this intervention when constructing their problem statement. The sub-region in the left PFC that elicited less activation is generally associated with analytical judgment and goal-directed planning. The group of students who completed the concept mapping activity had greater focused neurocognitive activation in their right PFC. The right PFC is often associated with divergent thinking and ill-structured representation. Patterns of functional connectivity across students’ PFC also differed between the groups. The concept mapping activity reduced the network density in students’ PFC. Lower network density is one measure of lower cognitive effort. These results provide new insight into the neurocognition of engineering students when designing and how educational interventions can change engineering students’ neurocognition. A better understanding of how interventions like concept mapping shape students’ neurocognition, and how this relates to learning, can lay the groundwork for novel advances in engineering education that support new tools and pedagogy for engineering design. 

The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) method and toolkit provides a well-structured approach to support engineering design with pre-defined steps: interpret and define the problem, search for standard engineering parameters, search for inventive principles to adapt, and generate final solutions. The research presented in this paper explores the neuro-cognitive differences of each of these steps. We measured the neuro-cognitive activation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of 30 engineering students. Neuro-cognitive activation was recorded while students completed an engineering design task. The results show a varying activation pattern. When interpreting and defining the problem, higher activation is found in the left PFC, generally associated with goal directed planning and making analytical. Neuro-cognitive activation shifts to the right PFC during the search process, a region usually involved in exploring the problem space. During solution generation more activation occurs in the medial PFC, a region generally related to making associations. The findings offer new insights and evidence explaining the dynamic neuro-cognitive activations when using TRIZ in engineering design. 

Ideation is a key phase in engineering design and brainstorming is an established method for ideation. A limitation of the brainstorming process is idea production tends to peak at the beginning and quickly decreases with time. In this exploratory study, we tested an innovative technique to sustain ideation by providing designers feedback about their neurocognition. We used a neuroimaging technique (fNIRS) to monitor students’ neurocognitive activations during a brainstorming task. Half received real-time feedback about their neurocognitive activation in their prefrontal cortex, a brain region associated with working memory and cognitive flexibility. Students who received the neurocognitive feedback maintained higher cortical activation and longer sustained peak activation. Students receiving the neurocognitive feedback demonstrated a higher percentage of right-hemispheric dominance, a region associated to creative processing, compared to the students without neurocognitive feedback. The increase in right-hemispheric dominance positively correlated with an increase in the number of solutions during concept generation and a higher design idea fluency. These results demonstrate the prospective use of neurocognitive feedback to sustain the cognitive activations necessary for idea generation during brainstorming. Future research should explore the effect of neurocognitive feedback with a more robust sample of designers and compare neurocognitive feedback with other types of interventions to sustain ideation. 

Abstract The research presented in this paper explores how engineering students cognitively manage concept generation and measures the effects of additional dimensions of sustainability on design cognition. Twelve first-year and eight senior engineering students generated solutions to 10 design problems. Half of the problems included additional dimensions of sustainability. The number of unique design solutions students developed and their neurocognitive activation were measured. Without additional requirements for sustainability, first-year students generated significantly more solutions than senior engineering students. First-year students recruited higher cortical activation in the brain region generally associated with cognitive flexibility, and divergent and convergent thinking. Senior engineering students recruited higher activation in the brain region generally associated with uncertainty processing and self-reflection. When additional dimensions of sustainability were present, first-year students produced fewer solutions. Senior engineering students generated a similar number of solutions. Senior engineering students required less cortical activation to generate a similar number of solutions. The varying patterns of cortical activation and different number of solutions between first-year and senior engineering students begin to highlight cognitive differences in how students manage and retrieve information in their brain during design. Students’ ability to manage complex requirements like sustainability may improve with education. 

Abstract This paper presents the results of studying the brain activations of 30 engineering students when using three different design concept generation techniques: brainstorming, morphological analysis, and TRIZ. Changes in students’ brain activation in the prefrontal cortex were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. The results are based on the area under the curve analysis of oxygenated hemodynamic response as well as an assessment of functional connectivity using Pearson’s correlation to compare students’ cognitive brain activations using these three different ideation techniques. The results indicate that brainstorming and morphological analysis demand more cognitive activation across the prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to TRIZ. The highest cognitive activation when brainstorming and using morphological analysis is in the right dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) and ventrolateral PFC. These regions are associated with divergent thinking and ill-defined problem-solving. TRIZ produces more cognitive activation in the left DLPFC. This region is associated with convergent thinking and making judgments. Morphological analysis and TRIZ also enable greater coordination (i.e., synchronized activation) between brain regions. These findings offer new evidence that structured techniques like TRIZ reduce cognitive activation, change patterns of activation and increase coordination between regions in the brain.