'Sleeping on it' really helps to solve problems: so the dream fires up the brain

Foreword. We do not know for sure whether these are just dreamlike intuitions or real 'steps' in the path of science. But it is certain that, at least in an anecdotal key, the light of some great discoveries would not have been kindled in the laboratory, but during sleep. And more specifically when the protagonist, beset by seemingly unsolvable questions, found the solution in the arms of Morpheus. Well, today, research confirms that thanks to desk-studied sounds capable of 'prompting' people to remember the need to solve a specific 'daytime' problem, one could actually improve decision-making performance and the resolution of the issue. The reason? By acting in the REM phase of sleep, the phase in which there are eye movements and lucid dreams, effective stimuli can be offered through a scientific method, targeted memory reactivation (TMR), which is applied precisely thanks to sound stimuli.

Pointing this way, confirming that 'sleeping on it' can help creativity and intuition, is a study conducted by experts at Northwestern University, coordinated by Ken Paller (first name Karen Konkoly), which appeared in Neuroscience of Consciousness.

The study examined 20 people (thus a very limited sample) who had experienced lucid dreaming and were therefore aware that they were dreaming. These subjects, in the laboratory, tried to solve a series of puzzles within a time limit of three minutes each, each with its own soundtrack. As the solutions to the tests were difficult to find, in most cases the solution was not found. At that point, sleep was monitored by means of polysomnography: during the REM phases, in which dreaming takes place, the soundtracks of half of the tests were presented, in order to selectively reactivate them by means of the seven notes. Several participants performed agreed signals before sleep to indicate that they had heard the presented signals and were working on the corresponding puzzles in their dreams. After waking up, the participants told the researchers about their dreams. Many dreams included fragments or ideas from the puzzles, but in 12 of the 20 participants, the dreams referred to the specific puzzles suggested by sound signals more often than those that did not. These individuals subsequently found the correct solution to the reactivated puzzles more often than the others, increasing their problem-solving ability from 17% to 42%.

Research shows that using sounds capable of recalling a previous experience of solving a specific puzzle, precisely the method of targeted memory reactivation or TMR, can improve performance. This does not mean that the observation is transferable tout court on all people and cannot offer definitive proof that dreaming a specific puzzle increases the probability of solving it upon waking. Other factors, such as curiosity about the answer to a particular riddle, could influence the results. but certainly working on sleep engineering to encourage creative thinking could be meaningful. Paller himself confirms this in a note from the university: 'many problems in today's world require creative solutions. By learning more about how our brain is able to think creatively, rethink and generate new creative ideas, we might be closer to solving the problems we want to solve, and sleep engineering could help'.

Having said that the characteristics of the study (a very small sample and on 'trained' people) do not allow definitive conclusions to be drawn and that in any case the 'doubling' effect of the ability to solve puzzles and problems was observed in those who actually achieved this result by dreaming (and not in all the participants), the research offers insights of great interest. "The investigation adds to the sleep studies that seek to intervene on rest to modify cognitive processes," comments Gianluca Rossato, Head of the Sleep Medicine Centre at the Irccs Sacro Cuore Don Calabria Hospital in Negrar. In this case, the focus was on the combined use of dreams and sound stimuli to improve cognitive and creative abilities. Above all, the research confirms that when faced with a problem, sleep is always useful, even from a scientific point of view: sleep helps to distance oneself from the challenges of thinking, to consolidate information, to integrate elements, to provide a different vision'. In short: we continue the lines of research investigating sleep and REM phase precisely in order to study creative restructuring. 'But we don't have enough information to arrive at a solution,' Rossato concludes. What we can say is that it is important to guarantee every person sufficient and regular sleep, and that recognising sleep disturbances itself is fundamental to keeping the brain healthy, since deep sleep allows the brain to be cleansed of toxins and counteracts the risk of neurodegenerative diseases'.