What do in common the inventor Thomas Edison, the physicist Albert Einstein, the painter Salvador Dali and the computer scientist Larry Page? A very special form of nap. A nap which is neither comfortable nor really relaxing, but which has the power to give ideas. Long abandoned by research on sleep, it has recently been implemented thanks to a French study and its existence is now scientifically proven: the creative nap, or “siete eurêka” exists.
In fact, it is not really a nap, but a state of semi-consciousness quickly interrupted. The inventor of the phonograph and the incandescent bulb told, in an interview in 1889, to have the habit of taking a nap seated in an armchair, metal orbs in your hands. When he fell asleep, they fell and awakened him while hitting the ground. Dali detailed his very similar method in a text, where a heavy key replaced the spheres. Before sitting in a “Spanish style” chair, he put on the ground, in the plumb of the key, a reversed plate to amplify the noise of the fall. When they woke up, ideas gushed, the problems found their solutions.
Delphine Oudiette did not hold an object in her hand but remembers having felt, since childhood, an abundance of images and ideas during this short phase between awakening and sleep. “It also happened to me, in this way, to find catchy titles for scholarship requests,” said this Inserm academic, research manager at the Institute of the Brain of Pitié-Salpêtrière, in Paris.
The “Edison method”
noting that there are many theories on a possible link between sleep and creativity, but no empirical evidence, it decides to use the “Edison method” with 103 participants. It presents them mathematical problems with a hidden rule which allows them a faster resolution. Then propose to those who have not found this rule to rest, an object by hand.
The results, published in the journal Science Advances, in December 2021, exceeds its expectations: 83 % of the participants who went through this hypnagogical state (between standby and sleep) of a few minutes (named N1) found the solution, Against only 30 % of people who remained awake. But beware, for those who prolonged the falling asleep and went in the N2 phase, of real sleep, only 14 % found the solution. In other words, the peak of creativity only occurs during this phase of drowsiness, which lasts only one to two minutes, but it falls into oblivion as soon as one falls asleep.
You have 22.51% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.