Sleeping on a problem ‘really can solve it’

An international team,led by Prof Sara Mednick of the University of California has found that people are able to think more laterally and quickly after a snooze and that if they dream the ability is even more enhanced.

“We found that – for creative problems that you have already been working on – the passage of time is enough to find solutions. However,for new problems,only Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep enhances creativity,” Prof Mednick said.

The team has based their findings on the analysis of an experiment involving 77 young adults who were given a number of word associated creative tasks in the morning.

The participants were shown multiple groups of three words (such as: cookie,heart,sixteen) and asked to find a fourth word that can be associated to all three words (like sweet).

Later in the day after some were allowed a nap – and monitored using brain scans to see what kind of sleep they entered – they were given the same and new tasks. For the same tasks,the passage of time and sleep allowed them to “incubate” their thoughts and come up with better and more varied solutions.

However for new tasks,those that entered REM sleep improved by almost 40 percent over their morning performances,according to the findings which are published in the latest edition of ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’.