Want to have your moment “aha”? Try a brief but well slept nap – has more benefits than you think.
NO PUBLISHED IN THE MAGAZINE PLOS BiologyAnika Löwe and her team explored how different sleep phases influence moments of discovery or insight.
By gathering 90 participants in an experience, the team defined a goal. The task, called Perceptual Spontaneous Strategy Switch Task (PSSST)included a hidden rule. Initially, the participants responded based on the movement of the points, reports the. Later, without warning, the color came to predict the correct answers. Discovering this shortcut was a sign of insight.
Just 70,6% of the participants reached this insightbut those who slept in N2 stood out: 85,7% they discovered the hidden rule. In the group that remained awake, only 55,5% They did it, and in Group N1, 63,6%.
Scientists examined Spectral slope of the brainan indicator of non -rhythmic activity.
A more pronounced slope is a sign of less “background noise” and deeper sleep. This steep inclination correlated with more moments of insightespecially in the front-central regions of the brain.
But what really mattered was not the rhythms of sleep, but the standard non -rhythmic. These can reflect processes such as synaptic reductiona kind of neural “restart” that occurs during sleep.
This is why a simple nap, if deep, can “restart” our brain, giving rise to “Aha” moment because we expect so much.
“The connection between the sharper inclination, the ‘aha’ moments after sleep and the regulation of synaptic bonds – which we have identified as crucial in our previous computational work – is extremely exciting,” says the researcher.
