Study: Sleeping on it helps in problem solving

London - Advice to "sleep on it" could be well founded, scientists say.

After a good night's sleep a problem that seemed insurmountable the night before can often appear more manageable, although the evidence until now has been anecdotal.

But researchers at the University of Luebek in Germany have designed an experiment that shows a good night's sleep can improve insight and problem-solving.

"If you have some newly acquired memories in your brain sleep acts on these memories, restructures them, so that after sleep the insight into a problem which you could not solve before increases," said Dr Jan Born, a neuroscientist, at the university.

To test the theory, they taught volunteers two simple rules to help them convert a string of numbers into a new order. There was also a third, hidden rule, which could help them increase their speed in solving the problem.

The researchers, who reported their findings in the science journal Nature, divided the volunteers into two groups, half were allowed to sleep after the training while the remainder were forced to stay awake.

Born and his team noticed that the group that had slept after the training were twice as likely to figure out the third rule as the other group.

"Sleep helped," Born said in a telephone interview.

"The important thing is that you have to have a memory representation in your brain of the problem you want to solve and then you sleep, so it can act on the problem."

But Born admitted that he and his team don't know how restructuring of memories occurs or what governs it.

Pierre Maquet and Perrine Ruby of the University of Liege in Belgium said the experimental evidence supports the anecdotal suggestions that sleep can stimulate creative thinking.

"The authors (of the study) have applied a clever test that allows them to determine exactly when insight occurs in the time-course of learning," they said in a commentary.

Although the role of sleep in human creativity will still be a mystery, the research gives people good reason to fully respect their periods of sleep, they added. -- Reuters

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