The 25-year-old scored an 89th minute penalty to earn Newcastle a valuable point in the race for Champions League qualification.
Newcastle remain in fourth, level on points with Chelsea in fifth, after their 3-1 win over Champions Liverpool in the late kick-off.
Isak’s goal took his league tally to 22 from his 32 games and Howe was full of praise for the Sweden international after the game with Brighton.
“I’ve not been there myself, so I can’t put myself in his shoes,” manager Howe said of Isak.
“But I can only imagine the process he is going through and then he has to stop, and that’s why he did very well because it would be very, very easy to miss that moment. But he didn’t.
“He’s got that ruthless mentality to scoring goals. And that’s where you really lean on those type of players. To have the coolness of mind to just take a step back and go, ‘right, this is what I need to do’ and deliver it for the team.
“It was a brilliant penalty in a big moment because we needed something from the game. Losing the game would have dented us.”