Study Shows Creativity Never Sleeps

German neurologists at the University of Lübeck are claiming to have proved what creative minds from Robert Louis Stephenson to Keith Richrads have been saying for years – the mind goes on working out problems and forming ideas while the rest of the body sleeps. The Germans hoped to show that mental glimpses of insight are reorganized into new, conscious knowledge. The researchers gave 66 students a memory task which taught two simple rules to help them convert a string of eight digits into a new order in seven steps. However, there was a secret third way which would come to the right answer almost immediately. Allowing half to sleep and keeping the other half awake, the researchers found that 60 percent of those who slept discovered the secret rule, compared to 22 percent among those who stayed awake.