According to the research of scientists, a sleep method used by Salvador Dali and Thomas Edison contributes to creativity. In this method, they would hold an object such as a spoon or a ball while lying down to sleep. When they fell asleep, the object would fall from their hands, make a sound and wake them up. This spot from which they awoke would have made them ideal for their study.
This stage of sleep is called the ‘hypnagogia’ state or N1. It only takes a few minutes before entering a deeper stage of sleep, and people spend 5 percent of their sleep time in this stage. Researchers say this sleep process is ideal for creativity. At this stage, you may dream of shapes, colors, and even small dreams before your closed eyes, but you can still hear what is going on in your room.
For a more precise result, an experiment was conducted with 103 people.
The researchers set out to test whether the sleep method worked for ordinary people. They recruited 103 healthy subjects who were asked to avoid stimulants and sleep a little less than usual so that they could fall asleep easily the night before the experiment.
The subjects had to solve a math problem by guessing the last digit in a string. There were two rules explained to them to find the answer. However, the researchers added a secret rule that the eighth digit is always the second digit in the sequence. This rule significantly shortens the processing time.
In the first part of the experiment, participants were asked to solve 10 math problems using two rules. After a 20-minute break, they were asked to sleep in a semi-lying position in the dark with their hands outside the armrests. They were holding a glass in their hands to wake up by dropping it from their hands. The researchers used an electroencephalogram (EEG) to detect when participants transitioned from light sleep to deeper sleep.
After the subjects rested, they were given more problems. The researchers noticed if they were faster this time or if they had solved the secret rule.
The short sleep period was indeed effective.
It was determined that the participants who spent at least 15 seconds in the N1 stage had an 83% chance of discovering the secret rule, and those who remained awake had a 30% chance. Participants were asked what they thought while sleeping. One participant said, “At one point I saw a horse in the hospital. There was also a man who was much older and had a plastic helmet on his face, who did the same experiment as me,” he says.
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