NOW when someone tells you to "put on your thinking cap", you actually can.

AUSTRALIAN researchers have found a way to temporarily change how we view the world with a "thinking cap" that stimulates the scalp with electrical pulses.

Professor Allan Snyder and Richard Chi from Sydney University's Centre of the Mind said subjects wearing the cap were able to acquire new modes of thinking and were three times as likely to solve complex problems.

"We look at the world through what we know," Prof Snyder told news.com.au.

"We have lots of preconceptions that allow us to manoeuvre quickly in the world, but that has a downside.

"That downside is that we tend to see the world as it was rather than as it is."

Prof Snyder and Mr Chi's cap is designed to counter that condition, opening the brain up to new ways of thinking.

The possibility of a thinking cap was first suggested by Prof Snyder eight years ago and its development has been widely reported.

The "thinking cap" experiments have since yielded positive results. The scientists' publication in peer review journal PLoS ONE is the first to demonstrate that brain stimulation can help people to "think outside the box".

Urban legends have abounded for decades about people struck by lightning who suddenly acquire the ability to play Brahm's piano concerto, or head- trauma patients suddenly developing artistic abilities they didn't have before.

In many of these cases, brain trauma victims experience a suppression of the left temporal lobe – which, in layman's terms – frees up the right side of the brain to be more creative.

Prof Snyder and Mr Chi's cap artificially manipulates the hemispheres of the brain to recreate the phenomenon.

After being exposed to low-level electrical pulses for 10 to 15 minutes, subjects were easily able to acquire new modes of thinking and were able to apply them for up to an hour.

The subjects were also three times as likely to solve complex problems while wearing the cap.

"Without the stimulation, only 20 per cent of people could do it," Mr Chi told news.com.au.

"With the stimulation, 60 per cent of people could solve the problem."

Prof Snyder said it was "the largest cognitive enhancement we are aware of".

Despite such results, Prof Snyder said the "thinking cap" wasn't designed to make people smarter.

"Its advantage isn't in acquiring more knowledge quickly," he said.

"Its advantage is in seeing the world anew. Taking ideas from different places and developing them into a new synthesis.

"It’s more of a 'creativity cap'."