Let Me Sleep On It
The study by Sara Mednick, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego and the VA San Diego Healthcare System, and first author Denise Cai, graduate student in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology, shows that REM directly enhances creative processing more than any other sleep or wake state.
“We found that – for creative problems that you’ve already been working on – the passage of time is enough to find solutions,” said Mednick. “However, for new problems, only REM sleep enhances creativity.”
Mednick added that it appears REM sleep helps achieve such solutions by stimulating associative networks, allowing the brain to make new and useful associations between unrelated ideas. Importantly, the study showed that these improvements are not due to selective memory enhancements.
A critical issue in sleep and cognition is whether improvements in behavioral performance are the result of sleep-specific enhancement or simply reduction of interference – since experiences while awake have been shown to interfere with memory consolidation.
The researchers controlled for such interference effects by comparing sleep periods to quiet rest periods without any verbal input.
Photo by ywel.
RedHotFranchises on June 24th, 2009 3:23 am
I have speculated that REM sleep is a “defragging” process, similar to computer defragging. This would explain how once the “files” in your mind are organized, creative connections are possible.
REM Sleep is just like a defragmentation of your mind, similar to defragmenting your computer. This would explain how once the “files” in your mind are organized, creative connections are possible.
Jaclyn on July 5th, 2009 12:32 pm
It is no surprise to me that REM sleep is the best time to help in the matters of new creative problems that you are facing. REM sleep nurtures the boy in many ways other than that, this is the period where you get your best, most rested and deepest sleep from, this is also the period of sleep where your body heals itself the most.
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