The Curiosity Advantage: Training Your Brain for Creativity in the AI Era with Samantha Yammine
“Excellent, very thought provoking!“
– What attendees were saying
In this optimistic session, Samantha Yammine turns the latest neuroscience into practical tools, showing us how to train curiosity for greater focus in an always-on world.
We hope this session helps activate ideas for how you can bring science-backed strategies for improved productivity to your future event audiences with NSB speakers like Science Sam!
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The Curiosity Advantage: Training Your Brain for Creativity in the AI Era | NSB Webinar | Samantha Yammine
🔑 Sample takeaways considerations:
✓ The neuroscience of creativity and productive capacity
Creativity is a delicate neurological dance between three systems:
- Executive control: The “brain-on” state required for deep engagement and intentional thought
- Mind wandering: The unstructured incubation space where the brain is allowed to drift
- Attention networks: The system that actively switches between intense focus and open wandering Modern life — notifications, multitasking, constant background noise — throws this balance off. Constant attention depletes us of the quiet, unfocused space required for mind wandering. Without that incubation period, breakthrough thinking becomes biologically challenging.
✓ Training curiosity and optimizing human brainpower
Through neuroplasticity (the concept that “cells that fire together wire together”), we can actively train our brains to foster adaptability and accelerate problem-solving. If curiosity is the coach driving us toward new ideas, then our daily habits are the “reps” required to build the neural pathways.
✓ Three things you can do on Monday
Samantha shares practical “reps” to build creative capacity:
- Create physical distance: Turning a phone face down isn’t enough to stop the cognitive tax. Place it in another room during deep work.
- Embrace the silence: Stop filling every void with a podcast, music or scrolling. Walking or doing chores in total silence is mandatory for resetting the brain’s attentional resources and allowing ideas to incubate.
- Strategic AI boundaries: Use AI strictly to offload low-value tasks, such as formatting tables. Keep your “brain-on” energy for top-of-license, specialized work. While AI formats your table, use that saved time to sit in silence and think about your next strategic move.
+ more in the session!
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ABOUT SAMANTHA YAMMINE
Dr. Samantha Yammine, PhD turns complex science into ideas anyone can actually use. She is the host of Curiosity Weekly, the flagship science podcast for Warner Bros Discovery and a regular science expert on CTV’s The Good Stuff with Mary Berg. She’s made appearances as a guest expert on TV, radio and streaming platforms including Netflix, CBC, TVO Kids, AsapSCIENCE and Discovery UK.
Science Sam has built a community of over a quarter million followers across social media platforms and worked with leading science organizations including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Let’s Talk Science, and Health Canada to make complex science more engaging, inclusive, and accessible.
Previous clients and media appearances includes: GE, 3M, ThermoFisher, Canadian Space Agency and more!
Ideal for events focused on:
Innovation and Creative Problem-Solving
AI Integration & Productivity
Mental Wellness and Brain Health
Combatting Change Resistance and Innovation Fatigue
Navigating Cognitive Overload and Decision Fatigue
Maximize the Impact
Looking for actionable training? Sam can extend this keynote into an interactive workshop, providing your attendees with customized, science-backed tips to optimize specific team dynamics and daily workflows.
Contact us to help connect you with your ideal speaker for your next event!