Love your naps? Scientists reveal secret connection between sleep and creativity

Love your naps? You'll now love them even more. A new study by MIT researchers, published in Scientific Reports has revealed that people are more creative after waking from the earliest stage of sleep. It was found that in the phase between when you're stuck between being asleep and being awake, your creative mind is quite fertile.

The researchers also found that when people are prompted to dream about a particular phase or topic during that sleep phase, they are more to perform creatively when asked to do three creative tasks around that topic.

Now you must be wondering how naps enable creativity. Here's your answer:

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Kathleen Esfahany, the study's lead author and an MIT senior said when an individual is promoted to dream about a particular topic during sleep, he/shecan have dream experiences thatcan be used laterin creative tasks.

The study revealed that people who recieved the prompts or "targeted dream incubation," were able to create more creative stories than people who napped without a specific prompt or those who didn't sleep at all.

According to the findings, this dream stage enables the brain to make connections between disparate concepts which boosts creativity.

Adam Haar Horowitz, another leader of the study said that the connection between sleep and creativity also called N1 or hypnagogia has been known for a while, however, the new study wanted to explore whether it was possible to guide the content of people's dreams and how it would affect their creative process.

The testing process:

For this, the researchers developed a device called Dormio to target dream incubation. This includes a glove that measures three physiological markers of sleep- changes in muscle tone, heart rate and skin conductance bycommunicating these responses to smartphones or computers.

A total of 49 participants were tested for the experiment. Individuals were asked to wear the glove and then take a nap. As soon as they would enter the N1 sleep rate, the app prompts them to dream about something specific. Right before they would jump into the next stage of sleep, the app wakesthem up, asking them about the dream and recording their response.

The results revealed that individuals who napped for 45 minutes had the best performance in terms of creativity.

The study also discovered that during sleep onset, the brain was able to bring together concepts that won't happen during waking hours.

The researchers further clarified that the Dormio device isn't particularly necessary for targeting dream incubation. They revealed that a device that can track sleep, play and record sound is suitable for this kind of enquiry.

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