Creativity

Cognitive psychology

Non-rapid eye movement sleep

Philosophy

Neuroscience

Social psychology

Sleep debt

Operating system

Psychiatry

Computer science

Eye movement

Sleep (system call)

Physics

Aesthetics

Psychology

Sleep inertia

Astronomy

Insomnia

Sleep onset

Electroencephalography

Wakefulness

Twilight

Period (music)

Falling (accident)

Slow-wave sleep

Science Advances

The ability to think creatively is paramount to facing new challenges, but how creativity arises remains mysterious. Here, we show that the brain activity common to the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness (nonrapid eye movement sleep stage 1 or N1) ignites creative sparks. Participants (N = 103) were exposed to mathematical problems without knowing that a hidden rule allowed solving them almost instantly. We found that spending at least 15 s in N1 during a resting period tripled the chance to discover the hidden rule (83% versus 30% when participants remained awake), and this effect vanished if subjects reached deeper sleep. Our findings suggest that there is a creative sweet spot within the sleep-onset period, and hitting it requires individuals balancing falling asleep easily against falling asleep too deeply.

Sleep onset is a creative sweet spot