Living at the border between wakefulness and a dream world may do wonders for your creativity.
People with narcolepsy are excessively sleepy during the day and can often drift off. Isabelle Arnulf, who treats narcolepsy at Piti茅-Salp锚tri猫re Hospital in Paris, noticed that her patients seemed remarkably creative. Many of them were artists and poets, for example.
鈥淓ven when they were sitting in the waiting room, they were doodling and writing,鈥� she says.聽鈥淎nd what they did was beautiful.鈥�
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Creativity test
Arnulf and her colleagues asked聽185 people with narcolepsy to complete a questionnaire designed to test for creativity. They聽compared the results with those of 126 people who didn鈥檛 have the condition. Thirty volunteers from each group also undertook a creativity test, which involved trying to find new solutions to problems, as well as creative writing and drawing.
People with narcolepsy did better聽on every measured aspect of聽creativity. For instance, when participants were asked to come up聽with a story that ended with the words 鈥溾�� and the last apple fell from the tree鈥�, most composed a version that included Adam and Eve, Isaac Newton or the end of summer.
But the most creative responses came from people with narcolepsy, including a聽story about trees joining a strike initiated by animals who had decided not to feed humans anymore, and another about a聽bulimic worm called Jean-Jacques.聽鈥淲e鈥檝e found something positive in the disorder,鈥� says Arnulf.
Sleep cycle
Arnulf thinks this could be because people with narcolepsy experience an unusual sleep cycle. A聽typical cycle begins with a period of non-REM sleep, but people with narcolepsy usually fall straight into REM sleep聽鈥� the period when we tend to experience vivid dreams.聽As a result, they seem to have better access to a pool of ideas, says Arnulf.
Penny Lewis at Cardiff University in the UK agrees. Our brains replay memories when we sleep, she explains. During deep, slow-wave, non-REM sleep, this seems to allow us to replay and group together similar experiences within a category. We might replay memories of all the birthday parties we have been to, for example. But in REM sleep, Lewis says the replayed memories seem less connected.
鈥淲e think REM sleep helps you make links between things that are not obviously linked, and that鈥檚 what creativity is all about,鈥� she says.
This is backed up anecdotally. Geneticist George Church 鈥� who聽plans to reverse ageing聽补苍诲听resurrect woolly mammoths, among other things 鈥� .
People who don鈥檛 have narcolepsy might be able to boost their creativity by maximising the time spent in REM sleep, says Arnulf. 鈥淭he period between 4 am and 7 am is the richest in REM sleep,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou could wake up at 3 am, look at a problem, and then sleep on it. And don鈥檛 wake up too early!鈥�
Brain
