"Neuroscientist Karen Konkoly is a lucid dreamer. When she's asleep and immersed in a dream, she knows that she is, in fact, dreaming. One of her favorite things to do during these sleep sojourns is pose personal, even existential questions - probing the mysterious terrain of her own subconscious mind. Asa researcher who studies the human mind, Konkoly has read many scientific papers positing different explanations for why humans dream - and she's made it her mission to rigorously test them."
"In a new study published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, Konkoly and colleagues probe the popular question of whether dreams can spark creativity or insight. The teamasked volunteers to puzzle over brainteasers that require eureka-like creative insights to be solved. Then, they went to bed in a sleep lab with instructions to try to dream about the problems they couldn't solve. In the early morning hours, when the dreamers were in the sleep phase associated with vivid dreaming, the researchers played "soundtracks" associated with half of the puzzles to cue people to dream of them. Upon waking, people were better at solving puzzles that were incorporated in their dreams."
A lucid dreamer intentionally probes her subconscious by posing personal and existential questions during dreams. Volunteers worked on insight-dependent brainteasers and then slept with instructions to dream about unsolved problems. Sound cues linked to half of the puzzles were played during the REM phase to nudge dream content toward specific problems. Dream-incorporated puzzles were more likely to be solved after waking. Experts note the logistical challenges of combining sleep research and creativity research. Historical and cultural efforts to engineer dreams are longstanding, and targeted cueing during vivid dreaming shows practical effects on creative problem solving.
Read at The Washington Post
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