Brain Jumpstarts New Creativity, Using Memories in Sleep

via codinghorr.typepadRoseTracker| The idea that our brain is active when we are sleeping is not new. To date, science has portrayed our sleeping brain as busy working on categorizing memories, getting them in a proper folder so we can retrieve them later.

A new study in Current Directions in Psychological Science argues that when we are sleeping our brain is also picking out the emotional details and reconfiguring the memories to help you produce new and creative ideas.

Jessica D. Payne of the University of Notre Dame, who co-wrote the review with Elizabeth A. Kensinger of Boston College, says that they’ve measured brain activity during sleep and found that regions of the brain involved with emotion and memory consolidation are active. The brain is busy not only storing information but reshuffling the cards in a way that helps people to come up with new ideas. via Science Daily

In a vivid example of this concept, I lived it first hand this week, waking up with an amazing visualization that totally startled me. Saturated in full color was a fan-out of over-sized cards, as if a hand was holding them right in front of my brain and eyes.

I jumped out of bed and had the most clarity ever of how to organize the websites, what to cut back on, what sections to advance. It was an amazing visualization but most important I had a plan of how to proceed. Anne