Health News

Sleep on It; Really, It Helps

Jan. 21, 2004 -- There may be a good reason why some of the most creative insights "dawn" on people when they first wake up in the morning.

A new study shows that sleep may help the mind unravel mysteries and gain unique insights into solving problems.

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Researchers found that people who slept after being trained on how to solve a task were twice as likely to gain a new insight on how to solve the problem than those who remained awake.

The finding may help explain why many scientists and artists have noted that some of their most creative breakthroughs have come to them after sleeping.

Sleep Helps Solve Problems

In the study, published in the Jan. 22 issue of Nature, researchers asked adults to convert a string of eight digits into a new order. They did this using a stepwise digit-by-digit application of two rules that were taught. But there was a third, hidden rule that was implicated in the processing of the digits that was not taught to the adults.

The initial training session was followed by either eight hours of nighttime sleep, nighttime wakefulness, or daytime wakefulness.

The study showed that those participants who slept were twice as likely to discover the hidden rule compared with those who stayed awake.

In an editorial that accompanies the study, Pierre Maquet and Perrine Ruby of the University of Liège in Belgium, say the findings raise some interesting questions.

"The primitive elements of the task that the participants gleaned during training seem to have been reorganized during sleep, eventually leading them to become conscious of the hidden rule the following morning," they write.

"The role that sleep plays in human creativity will be a mystery for some time yet," write the editorialists, "But at the very least, Wagner et al. give us good reason to fully respect our periods of sleep -- especially given the current trend to recklessly curtail them."