Research Reveals That Sleep Can Improve Decision-Making

Author John Steinbeck once remarked, “It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”

Countless individuals have credited their dreams with inspiring breakthroughs and innovations. Modern research into the science of sleep now provides evidence that supports these assertions.

A 2024 study highlights that sleep can enhance our ability to make rational, well-informed decisions and resist being misled by initial impressions. Researchers at Duke University demonstrated this through a garage-sale game experiment.

Participants searched virtual boxes filled mostly with low-value items, but a few contained more valuable objects. After examining several boxes, they were asked to choose their favorite, earning a cash reward based on the total value of its contents.

Sleep Enhances Logical Decision-Making

Those who made their selection immediately often based their decision on the first few items they encountered, neglecting the overall box contents. However, participants who slept before deciding made more logical choices, unaffected by the order of valuable items within the boxes.

When faced with a challenging problem, it can often feel like progress is impossible. However, a 2019 study discovered that providing the sleeping brain with cues—such as sounds linked to an unresolved problem—helped participants solve the problem the following day.

In the experiment, participants attempted a series of puzzles while a unique sound played in the background for each. At the end of the session, researchers collected the puzzles participants couldn’t solve. While the participants slept, the researchers replayed sounds associated with some of the unsolved puzzles. The next morning, participants returned to tackle the puzzles again. They were more successful at solving those linked to the sound cues, indicating that these cues prompted the sleeping brain to work on the problem.

Sleep may aid problem-solving by helping us uncover hidden connections between objects and events. A 2023 study explored this concept.

Sleep Boosts Recognition of Hidden Connections

Participants were asked to learn associations between four items (an animal, a location, an object, and a food) tied to an event described by the researchers. Some pairings were straightforward (e.g., item A directly linked to item B), while others were more subtle (e.g., item D was indirectly connected to items A or C). After a night’s sleep, participants were better at identifying these indirect links—such as the connection between items A and D—compared to those who stayed awake. This suggests that sleep enhances our ability to recognize deeper patterns in complex information.

Thomas Edison, a light bulb inventor, used daytime naps to enhance creativity, holding a ball that would drop and wake him as he drifted off. He and others, like Salvador Dalí, believed this twilight state between wakefulness and sleep fueled creative insights.

In 2021, researchers tested this by having participants nap while solving a math problem with a hidden shortcut. Those who reached light sleep were better at finding the shortcut, often experiencing hypnagogia—vivid imagery at sleep onset.

A 2023 study found hypnagogic imagery also enhanced creativity in tree-themed tasks, linking the imagery to better problem-solving. Edison was right—sleep onset is a creative sweet spot.

Read the original article on: Science Alert

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