QUALITY SLEEP PROMOTES CREATIVITY

Scientists now have the hard evidence they needed to support what everyone already believes: a good night's sleep makes you more creative than a sleepless night. Many studies have shown that the brain continues to work on the day's problems during sleep. But does the brain's work during sleep provide any improvement in creativity with regard to solving the problem? That question has remained unanswered until a recent study involving a mathematical puzzle.

In this study, researchers at the University of Luebeck asked participants to learn how to perform a series of mathematical puzzles. With practice, participants improved their performance on these puzzles. According to the report of a study published in the journal Nature, after this first day of initial practice some participants received eight hours of sleep, while others were kept awake all night. That next day, the participants continued their work on the same type of puzzles. What they didn't realize was that, although practice helps in solving these puzzles, there was a hidden pattern in the puzzles that would show how to solve all the puzzles easily. On the second day, more than twice as many of the sleep-fulfilled participants spontaneously discovered this hidden clue as did the sleep-deprived participants.

The researchers speculate that during sleep, the brain rearranges its memories, restructuring the information in such a way as to make insights more probable.