An overview of the link between creativity and sleep: creativity models, napping behavior of famous creative people, the role of REM in novel concepts, and creativity tests.
2. Creativity
The forming of associative combinations which
either meet specified requirements or are in
some way useful.
Cognitive flexibility
Finding remote associations
3. Creativity Model #1
1. Confront problem intensely, without success.
2. Put the problem aside.
3. Enter dormancy, putting no conscious work
on the problem (incubation).
4. Get the aha—an insight flash to
consciousness while in idle thought.
6. Paul McCartney
Yesterday
Robert Louis Stevenson
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Albert Einstein
multiple discoveries
Otto Loewi
synaptic connections
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein
9. REM Refresher
1. Rapid, random side-to-side eye movements
2. occurs in ~90-120 minute cycles at night
3. up to 20-25% of total sleep time in adults
4. proportion decreases with age
(a newborn may spend 80% of sleep in REM).
5. Dominates the latter half of the sleep period,
especially the hours before waking
6. REM typically increases each sleep cycle in the
night
7. Atonia
10. REM Refresher
1. REM sleep: bizarre and hallucinatory compared
to thought-like NREM
2. Paradoxical sleep
12. REM Neurotransmitters
• Norepinephrine is inhibitory in locus coeruleous
of the pons atonia
• Acetylcholine is active during REM
• Serotonin inhibits REM
14. Study #1
1. Measure creative problem solving after REM sleep
through the Remote Associates Test (RAT).
• 77 people, aged 18-35
• No personal reported history of illness
• Sleep at least 6 hrs/night for the 5 days up to the
experiment
• Sleep at least 6.5 hours before test day
• Kept sleep diaries; wore actigraphs 5-7 days before testing
• No alcohol or caffeine 24 hrs before and during experiment
22. Study #2
700ms fixation point
200ms prime
Indefinite ms target
ID word/nonword
keypress
Semantic priming can test associate memory processes.
23. Study #2
Contrary to the overall
patterns, subjects awakened
from REM showed greater
priming by weak primes than
strong primes (p=0.01)
24. Factors contributing to creativity and
sleep
1. REM, not incubation, improves creativity by
priming associative networks
2. Creativity benefits from prior exposure
3. Sleep selectively enhances memory expected
to be of future relevance
25. Discussion
1. REM is important for creative thinking,
particularly for highly difficult problems with a
visual solution or that challenge the prior
paradigm of thinking.
2. Sleep insomnia may prime the brain for
divergent thinking, because of its fatigue,
thereby letting thoughts that would have
otherwise been controlled by areas like the
dlPFC to get through.
26. Questions
1. Is creativity best measured through words and
vocabulary?
2. Can other senses, such as olfactory and auditory
ability, be tested and used for creativity tasks?
1. Creativity across age spans: does creative
performance persist in the same way by age
group?
27. In closing
Let us learn to dream.
--Nobel Laureate Friedrich A. Kekulé
Looking at problems in new ways. Seeking unobvious connections
Quoted In Mednick’s paper.
Rapid, random side-to-side eye movements
occurs in ~90-120 minute cycles at night
up to 20-25% of total sleep time in adults
proportion decreases with age (a newborn may spend 80% of total sleep time in REM).
Dominates the latter half of the sleep period, especially the hours before waking,
REM in each sleep cycle typically increases as the night goes on
Atonia caused by inhibitory norepinephrine in the locus coeruleous of the pons
the EEG trace looks much more like that observed in people who are awake: the waves are faster, and their amplitude is smaller.
Spontaneous creative activity (like jazz improv) is linked to absence of control by areas that mediate conscious volitional control like the dlPFC and activation of internally controlled mPFC, which are both areas that mirror this behavior in REM sleep. (Maquet et al., 1996)
Norepinephrine increases signal-to-noise ratio, and is reduced in REM. Without it, it’s thought to lead to increased spread of activation.
P=.047, 1-way ANOVA and post hoc analysism
17 male and 27 female college undergrads underwent a semantic priming test. Semantic priming is the decrease in reaction time to a target word, when it is preceded by a semantically related prime word (as opposed to an unrelated prime word. Weak priming is measured with primes that are only weakly associated with target words, and strong priming is measured with strongly associated primes.
Subjects performed four blocks of trials on two test nights
Once prior to bedtime (PRE)
twice immediately upon awakening
a fourth time five minutes after awakening in the morning (POST)
Four lists of 72 prime-target pairs presented.
Each list had 12 pairs of words that were
Unrelated (cream-right)
Weakly related (thief-wrong)
Strongly related (long-short)
And 36 word/nonword pairs (fall-lova)
REM dreams are considered to be hyperassociative. Confirmed. Weak semantic primes are enhanced upon wakening from REM
Reaction time of unrelated words minus reaction time of related words
Sleep Inhibition and creativity / creative insomnia – may create conditions similar to REM sleep, hence its potential effectiveness