By: Inas Essa

While we might think sleep is a time of complete rest, different biological processes happen during this period. The body repairs cells and restores energy; the brain conducts heavy work to store information and memories; nerve cells communicate and reorganize, which supports healthy brain function. While deep sleep seems to have no competitor in important biological processes, dozing off has a critical role in boosting creativity.

The Magical Role of Sleep Onset

The brief period between wakefulness and sleep has always been a rich research point; many scientists have been trying to decode its mystery and what happens during it.

This is not a recent issue; Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali were known to be occupied by capturing the creativity that comes out of this period. They had a deep belief in its importance as a fertile ground for discoveries and creativity. As a result, they developed a method to catch the brief insights that come out of it.

Their method included taking naps while holding an object in their hand. As their muscles relaxed during the transition to sleep, this object fell and made noise, waking them up in time to write the insights that had crossed their minds during this pre-sleep period.

Napping Proven Benefits

Siesta or catnap, both describe the grey zone between wakefulness and sleep where our consciousness fluctuates, our responsiveness decreases, and our awareness of the real world starts to dissolve, surrendering to spontaneous sensations close to dreaming. According to previous research, these naps have several benefits, including:

• Consolidating memories and learning by retaining just learned information;

• Increasing alertness and attentiveness;

• Boosting athletic performance;

• Improving the mood and helping recover from negative emotions.

Dozing off and Solving Problems

In recent research that studied what happens during this brief period and if it has a real effect on individuals, scientists compared the ability of participants to solve a problem after dozing off compared to other participants who stayed awake.

In the study, the researchers used the Number Reduction Task (NRT), in which participants must solve a series of arithmetic problems as quickly as possible following two simple rules. While this method may seem difficult, finding the solution is easy and could be found by proceeding steadily. That is because there is a hidden shortcut; if found, the participant would find the solution effortlessly.

During the study, the participants were first given 60 trials in advance, to familiarize themselves with the method used for the task. From the beginning, 16% of them found the shortcut so they were excluded from further analyses. Participants were then allowed to have a 20-minute break in conditions that facilitate sleep onset, like sitting in a dark room, on a comfortable chair with their eyes closed. They were also asked to hold a plastic bottle in their hand, so they would wake themselves up by dropping it before falling into deep sleep.

This was intended to help participants stay in the transition phase between wakefulness and sleep, to test the specific effect of this phase on creativity. After this break, participants worked on 330 new trials of the same NRT task. Throughout the experiment, the researchers placed sensors on their heads, chin, and around their eyes to monitor their cerebral, ocular, and muscular activity.

These signals helped the scientists monitor the sleep state of participants in real-time and divide them into 3 groups:

1. Those who stayed awake during the whole break;

2. Those who dozed off and entered only the first stage of sleep called N1;

3. Those who reached the second stage, N2.

Dozing off: Creativity Trigger

Researchers found that 83% of participants who dozed off found the hidden trick, compared to only 31% of participants in the group who stayed awake, while the creativity boost disappeared in participants who reached N2, as only 14% found the trick.

In a nutshell, this research indicates that there is a fertile ground for creativity during sleep onset; to reach it, one must fall asleep easily but not too deeply. If you want to give it a try, you need to relax on a comfortable chair or sofa with a stretched arm while holding a light slippery object that would make enough noise when falling to wake you up before you get into deep sleep.

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