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Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance.

ABSTRACT: The link between dreams and creativity has been a topic of intense speculation. Recent scientific findings suggest that sleep onset (known as N1) may be an ideal brain state for creative ideation. However, the specific link between N1 dream content and creativity has remained unclear. To investigate the contribution of N1 dream content to creative performance, we administered targeted dream incubation (a protocol that presents auditory cues at sleep onset to introduce specific themes into dreams) and collected dream reports to measure incorporation of the selected theme into dream content. We then assessed creative performance using a set of three theme-related creativity tasks. Our findings show enhanced creative performance and greater semantic distance in task responses following a period of N1 sleep as compared to wake, corroborating recent work identifying N1 as a creative sweet spot and offering novel evidence for N1 enabling a cognitive state with greater associative divergence. We further demonstrate that successful N1 dream incubation enhances creative performance more than N1 sleep alone. To our knowledge, this is the first controlled experiment investigating a direct role of incubating dream content in the enhancement of creative performance.

SUBMITTER: Horowitz AH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10185495 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance.

Horowitz Adam Haar AH Esfahany Kathleen K Gálvez Tomás Vega TV Maes Pattie P Stickgold Robert R

Scientific reports 20230515 1

The link between dreams and creativity has been a topic of intense speculation. Recent scientific findings suggest that sleep onset (known as N1) may be an ideal brain state for creative ideation. However, the specific link between N1 dream content and creativity has remained unclear. To investigate the contribution of N1 dream content to creative performance, we administered targeted dream incubation (a protocol that presents auditory cues at sleep onset to introduce specific themes into dreams ...[more]

PMID: 37188795

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Project description:BackgroundPhysical activity is a health-relevant lifestyle factor associated with various benefits on physical and mental health. Several meta-analyses indicated effects of acute and chronic physical activities on elementary cognitive functions such as executive control processes, memory, and attention. Meta-analytic evidence on the effects of physical activity on creative idea generation, which involves a conglomerate of these elementary cognitive functions, is largely missing.ObjectiveA twofold approach was used to evaluate (1) if there is an association between habitual physical activity and creative ideation and (2) if physical activity interventions (acute and chronic) enhance creative ideation performance.MethodsMultilevel meta-analytic methods were applied to (1) evaluate the cross-sectional association between creative ideation performance and measures of habitual physical activity and (2) the effect of physical activity on creative ideation performance. Indicators of creative ideation (fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, or composite score), creativity domain (verbal, figural), population (adults, children), gender, study quality, and publication year served as moderator variables for both meta-analyses. Analyses of intervention studies additionally examined the moderator variables study design (between, within), time of measurement (during, after), and implementation of intervention (acute, chronic).ResultsThe applied meta-analytic multilevel analysis indicated a medium effect for cross-sectional studies (r = 0.22, SE = 0.06, p = 0.002, 95% CI [0.10-0.34]) based on 17 effects sizes from seven studies. The pooled effects of 28 intervention studies, providing 115 effect sizes, indicated a medium effect size of Hedges' g = 0.47 (SE = 0.09, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.30-0.65]). Furthermore, a stronger effect was observed for chronic interventions of several days or weeks in comparison with acute interventions of one single bout.ConclusionThis study adds important new meta-analytic evidence on the beneficial role of physical activity beyond mental and physical health outcomes: Physical activity has a positive impact on creative ideation, which expands the literature on the role of physical activity in more elementary cognitive functions such as executive control, memory, and attention. Moderator analyses suggested that chronic interventions showed stronger effects than single bouts of physical activity. Rigorously conducted randomized controlled intervention studies and more cross-sectional studies are needed to broaden the evidence in this nascent field of research.

Project description:In birds, parents must provide their eggs with a safe thermal environment suitable for embryonic development. Species with uniparental incubation must balance time spent incubating eggs with time spent away from the nest to satisfy self-maintenance needs. Patterns of nest attendance, therefore, influence embryonic development and the time it takes for eggs to hatch. We studied nest attendance (time on the nest), incubation constancy (time nests were at incubation temperatures), and variation in nest temperature of 1,414 dabbling duck nests of three species in northern California. Daily nest attendance increased from only 1-3% on the day the first egg was laid to 51-57% on the day of clutch completion, and 80-83% after clutch completion through hatch. Variation in nest temperature also decreased gradually during egg-laying, and then dropped sharply (33-38%) between the day of and the day after clutch completion because increased nest attendance, particularly at night, resulted in more consistent nest temperatures. During the egg-laying stage, nocturnal nest attendance was low (13-25%), whereas after clutch completion, nest attendance was greater at night (≥87%) than during the day (70-77%) because most incubation recesses occurred during the day. Moreover, during egg-laying, nest attendance and incubation constancy increased more slowly among nests with larger final clutch sizes, suggesting that the number of eggs remaining to be laid is a major driver of incubation effort during egg-laying. Although overall nest attendance after clutch completion was similar among species, the average length of individual incubation bouts was greatest among gadwall (Mareca strepera; 779 minutes), followed by mallard (Anas platyrhynchos; 636 minutes) and then cinnamon teal (Spatula cyanoptera; 347 minutes). These results demonstrate that dabbling ducks moderate their incubation behavior according to nest stage, nest age, time of day, and clutch size and this moderation likely has important implications for egg development and overall nest success.

Project description:BackgroundIndividualized, targeted, and intense training is the hallmark of successful gait rehabilitation in people post-stroke. Specifically, increasing use of the impaired ankle to increase propulsion during the stance phase of gait has been linked to higher walking speeds and symmetry. Conventional progressive resistance training is one method used for individualized and intense rehabilitation, but often fails to target paretic ankle plantarflexion during walking. Wearable assistive robots have successfully assisted ankle-specific mechanisms to increase paretic propulsion in people post-stroke, suggesting their potential to provide targeted resistance to increase propulsion, but this application remains underexamined in this population. This work investigates the effects of targeted stance-phase plantarflexion resistance training with a soft ankle exosuit on propulsion mechanics in people post-stroke.MethodsWe conducted this study in nine individuals with chronic stroke and tested the effects of three resistive force magnitudes on peak paretic propulsion, ankle torque, and ankle power while participants walked on a treadmill at their comfortable walking speeds. For each force magnitude, participants walked for 1 min while the exosuit was inactive, 2 min with active resistance, and 1 min with the exosuit inactive, in sequence. We evaluated changes in gait biomechanics during the active resistance and post-resistance sections relative to the initial inactive section.ResultsWalking with active resistance increased paretic propulsion by more than the minimal detectable change of 0.8 %body weight at all tested force magnitudes, with an average increase of 1.29 ± 0.37 %body weight at the highest force magnitude. This improvement corresponded to changes of 0.13 ± 0.03 N m kg- 1 in peak biological ankle torque and 0.26 ± 0.04 W kg- 1 in peak biological ankle power. Upon removal of resistance, propulsion changes persisted for 30 seconds with an improvement of 1.49 ± 0.58 %body weight after the highest resistance level and without compensatory involvement of the unresisted joints or limb.ConclusionsTargeted exosuit-applied functional resistance of paretic ankle plantarflexors can elicit the latent propulsion reserve in people post-stroke. After-effects observed in propulsion highlight the potential for learning and restoration of propulsion mechanics. Thus, this exosuit-based resistive approach may offer new opportunities for individualized and progressive gait rehabilitation.

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Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance.

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Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance.

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