Sleep may help solve creative problems.

A study in Neuroscience of Consciousness reported that volunteers who incorporated unsolved puzzles into REM dreams solved them at higher rates, after researchers cued half the puzzles with unique soundtracks during REM sleep.

A new experiment published in Neuroscience of Consciousness examined whether dreams can spark creative insights. Volunteers tried to solve insight-style brainteasers, then slept in a lab where researchers played unique soundtracks during REM sleep to cue half of the problems. Some participants spontaneously dreamed of the puzzles and some responded to the sound cues. The study builds on earlier work that investigated sleep-stage cueing and problem-solving. Key findings: - Researchers presented unsolved brainteasers, associated each puzzle with a unique soundtrack, and played those soundtracks during REM sleep to try to cue related dreams. - The cues produced a response in a little over half of participants; some people also incorporated puzzles into dreams without being cued. - Forty percent of people who incorporated puzzles into their dreams, whether cued or not, solved the puzzles the next morning, about twice the rate of those who did not. - Participants who responded to the cues and dreamed of the puzzles when prompted also solved those puzzles more often, which the authors describe as preliminary causal evidence that REM dreams can promote creative problem-solving. - Experts noted limitations, including a relatively small number of subjects and dreams, and called for larger, repeated experiments; previous studies have also reported problem-solving benefits from cueing in other sleep stages. Summary: The study provides preliminary evidence that REM-sleep dreams can be associated with increased rates of solving insight problems, and researchers used sound cues during REM to prompt dream content. The findings are described as promising but limited by sample size, and investigators and outside experts say replication and larger studies are needed to test underlying mechanisms such as associative processing and memory consolidation.