Wio News: Love your naps? You’ll now love them even more. A new study by MIT researchers, published in Scientific Reports has revealed that people are more creative after waking from the earliest stage of sleep. It was found that in the phase between when you’re stuck between being asleep and being awake, your creative mind is quite fertile.
The researchers also found that when people are prompted to dream about a particular phase or topic during that sleep phase, they are more to perform creatively when asked to do three creative tasks around that topic. Now you must be wondering how naps enable creativity. Here’s your answer: Kathleen Esfahany, the study’s lead author and an MIT senior said when an individual is promoted to dream about a particular topic during sleep, he/she can have dream experiences that can be used later in creative tasks.
The study revealed that people who recieved the prompts or “targeted dream incubation,” were able to create more creative stories than people who napped without a specific prompt or those who didn’t sleep at all. According to the findings, this dream stage enables the brain to make connections between disparate concepts which boosts creativity.