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Sleeping on a Problem Where Insight is
Expected
Robert Stickgold
Harvard Medical SchoolBeth Israel Deaconess
Medical CenterBoston, MA
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Insight
The sudden appearance in conscious awareness of
a new and useful relationship among previously
known information
The sudden appearance in conscious awareness of
a really big new and useful relationship among
previously known information

• Questions
• How does the nonconscious brain find these
  relationships?
• How does it identify them as valuable?
• How does it bring them into conscious awareness?
• Should we only consider the really big ones?

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Really Big?
Normal science "Curiosity demands that we ask
questions, that we try to put things together and
try to understand them... In this way we try
gradually to analyze all things, to put together
things which at first sight look different, with
the hope that we may be able to reduce the number
of different things and thereby understand them
better. Richard Feynman (1963) "The Feynman
lectures on physics"
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Really Big?
Scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a
growing sense ... that an existing paradigm has
ceased to function adequately in the exploration
of ... nature. Entrenchment reduces possibility
of shifting Thomas Kuhn (1962) "The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions"
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Or Not So Big?
Piaget proposed that children learn by
constructing a model of the world built of
schemas that explain how parts of the world
work. Assimilation (like normal science)
integrates new perceptual information into innate
or personally developed schemas (robins)
(Children are biased to fit data into
schemas) (Piaget, 1981)
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Or Not So Big?
When assimilation fails (penguins)
accommodation modifies the schemas to fit
reality (Piaget Inhelder, 1969, p. 6)
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Sleep Insight
Insight, then, whether related to large or small
discoveries, is a special case of Piagetian
accommodation in which the process occurs outside
of conscious awareness. Obviously, this process
of accommodation (and insight) is defined by the
innate wiring and functional plasticity of the
human brain.
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There are Different Kinds of Sleep
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A Good Nights Sleep
Wake
I/REM
II
III
IV
11 PM
1 AM
3 AM
5 AM
7 AM
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Sleep Physiology
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Neuromodulation Varies Across the Wake-Sleep Cycle
Active
Wake
ACh
NE
5-HT
Ach acetylcholine (scopolamine,
belladonna) NE norepinephrine (MAO inhibitors,
cocaine) 5HT serotonin (Prozac, LSD)
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Regional Activation in REM Sleep
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Hippocampal-Neocortical Dialog
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There are Different Kinds of Memory
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Sleep Alters Associative Memory Systems
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(No Transcript)
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Sleep Enhances Insight
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Development of Insight
1 1 4 4 9 4 9 4
9
1
9
1
4
4
1
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Sleep/ Night
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Sleep Calculates the Rules
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Probabilistic Learning
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Practice Sleep Enhance Performance
Wake Sleep
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12
10
Improvement ( of trials)
8
6
4
2
0
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Weather Forecasting REM Sleep
r 0.70 p 0.008
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Sleep Enhances the Gist
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12-Hour Deterioration
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0
-15
Change (relative to 20 min
-30
-45
-60
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Morning Recall
r -0.47 p 0.03
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Morning Nap Recall
r -0.54 p 0.037
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Creative Intrusions
Word List





Blood Doctor
Plate Cup
Spoon Cup
Fuzzy
Rough? Smooth?
Swirl
Soft? Mountain??
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Creative Intrusions
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New Experiences are Replayed at Sleep
OnsetHypnagogic dreams
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Alpine Racer II

• 14 out of 16 players (88)
• 42 of first night reports contain skiing imagery
• 3 out of 3 controls who only watched

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Alpine Racer Images

• I keep seeing all the places where I fall- like,
  hit the walls. Its kind of annoying and then
  my legs fly up in the air. (SEC)

I can sort of feel the motions of the game but
more not really seeing it. (MLC) I envisioned
myself skiing, and for a second there it felt
like I was skiing backwards - something I used to
attempt when I was younger. (CMD)
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Delayed Onset Reporting
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Insights Without Insight
"I felt as though I was falling downhill. And I
was dreaming about like instructions to a young
king or something." (JAV, rpt 4)
"I felt like I was sort of sliding downhill
again. And, um ... there were instructions and a
person and uh, I don't know." (JAV, rpt 6) "I was
having a rather vivid image as though I was
moving forward through some kind of a forest... I
was moving forward very stiffly. Um, my entire
upper body was incredibly straight ... it felt
almost as if I was moving forward on a conveyor
belt, and, without my legs actually moving."
(MAM, rpt 8)
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The Biology of Insight

• The discovery of insights is aided by
• Shutting down logical (DLPFC) processing
• Shutting down episodic memory replay (HC)
• Enhancing error detection (ACC, MOFC)
• Enhancing weak associations, and thereby
• Enhancing the recognition of accommodations that
  expand our understanding of the world

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The Biology of Insight
All of which occurs during REM Sleep!
Thus sleep, and REM sleep in particular, may not
only represent a model system for the processes
involved in insight But may actually represent
a brain state which evolved, in part, to
facilitate the discovery of insights.