Cocktail for creativity
Looking for ways to inspire creativity? New research shows that artist Salvador Dalí was on to something with his napping idea.
Covid interfered, but I was able to get to Te Papa’s Surrealist Art: Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen on its final day last year. Initially slated for 2020, the exhibition finally opened in June 2021, then just as I was preparing to buy tickets in August, the nationwide Delta-related lockdown upended everything. The upside was that when we did go, we had the place almost to ourselves because of the restriction on visitor numbers.
I appreciate surrealism isn’t everyone’s cup of sea-urchin juice, but I really enjoyed the exhibition, particularly the chance to see several great pieces attributed to Salvador Dalí –the same artist who suggested eating sea urchins procured just before a full Moon as a way to inspire creativity.
Creativity is a tough topic to study, not least because it requires being able to define it so we know it when we see it. In fact, research on creativity is a relatively recent endeavour. Part of the reticence may reflect the belief that creativity is something you either have or you don’t – it’s more nature than nurture.
Dalí was clearly highly creative. I don’t know if he ate sea urchins, but he definitely wrote about another technique he used to come up with ideas. Simply take a nap with a key in your hand (a piece of cutlery will also work), resting your arm so the key is above a plate or glass. When you nod off, the key falls, the noise jolts you awake and then you quickly scribble down whatever was in your head at that moment. Although the extent to which people think they dream varies, it’s really related to how often they wake during the night, because we tend only to remember the dreams wew wake up from. Dalí’s technique takest advantage of this.
Another reasonably famous, but almost certainly false story about dream inspirattion involves someone (several someones have been named iin variations of this tale) waking from a dream in which they had discovered something amazing that would change the world and their place in it. They quickly scribble it down, then return to bed, but on waking in the morning, they find that, instead of something world shattering, their night-time scribblings read “Hogamous, higamous, Man is polygamous. Higamous, hogamous, Woman monogamous.”
If a lightning nap inspires creativity, then a longer kip should work even greater wonders, right? Well, no. At least, that’s not what research by Sorbonne Université scientists, published in late 2021, shows. Célia Lacaux and her colleagues invited the usual guineapig participants into the lab to solve a series of maths problems. There was actually a simple hidden rule that could be used to quickly solve these problems, but participants had to work it out for themselves.
To help, the researchers encouraged the participants to recline in a chair, resting a hand holding a bottle on the chair arm. Sound familiar? About half the participants didn’t nod off – it’s a pretty weird setting, after all – but 30% of them returned to the maths problems having worked out the hidden rule. Those who had a wee catnap were three times more likely to work out the rule. But only if they had a brief period of what’s called non-Rapid Eye Movement (or N1) sleep. If they fell asleep for longer or missed out on the N1 phase of the nap, they were no more likely than the non-nappers to work out the rule.
Lacaux speculates that “N1 presents an idea cocktail for creativity”, because this sleep phase is characterised by those weird hypnagogic perceptual experiences, and also because neuroimaging shows greater activity and connection of brain networks that appear implicated in creativity. In short, Dalí was right. ▮
Salvador Dalí suggested eating sea urchins as a way to inspire creativity.