For the "trainee scientists" -- those in PhD programs or completing a postdoc -- the neurons appeared more like what would be seen in a microscope image. Nuclei were excluded, the number of dendrites was reduced, and orientation was inconsistent -- all characterizing neurons as you would see them "in nature" not in the pages of a textbook.

The final group, those drawn by lab leaders, are characterized by their variety. "Whether by virtue of their simplicity or naturalism," the authors write, "there is a strong impression that these images exhibit the privilege that each researcher appears to reserver for his or her hypothesis about the hidden neuron cell identity."

The authors believed that the undergraduates were missing a "central imaginative step" -- the "ability to embody a neuron's perspective" -- and that it was holding them back from deeper learning. Could they be taught to understand neurons like the more advanced scientists without going through the years of enculturation and research?

They decided to modify the experiment. Before telling the undergraduates to "please draw a neuron," they put had them participate in exercises designed to get the students to think from the perspective of the neuron -- for example, by having students fan out across the lab in a pattern that mimicked a neuron's growth. The authors found that following the interventions, the students drew much more varied images of neurons. "The brief encounters with a teaching approach aimed at embodied knowledge have apparently liberated a divergence of conceptual ideas about brain cells," the authors write. They can't know for sure why, but, "a tempting hypothesis is that postintervention the students have been licensed to show an innately playful and creative approach."

The experiment is a perfect demonstration that knowledge and understanding lead to creativity. The undergraduate drawings weren't wrong; they just were unimaginative, rigid. As people progressed in their scientific careers, their ideas suffused their drawings. If that's not a great reason to commit yourself to trying to understand something new, I don't know what is.

H/t Elizabeth Preston via @edyong209