part0024

When Nicole goes to bed, instead of checking Facebook or watching the news, she reflects on her day and writes a few lines in a gratitude journal. This nightly activity doesn’t take much time, but it delivers incredible benefits to Nicole’s emotional well-being and helps her brain transition from more active brain states to the slower theta, so she can gently fall asleep and enjoy a peaceful night’s rest.

Jason is under the false impression he can function perfectly on less sleep. One of the main reasons he’s anxious, irritable, and craving caffeine and alcohol is because of his terrible sleeping habits. His habitual lack of sleep is one of the main reasons he will die much younger than he might have. He has existed on six hours of sleep per night for so long, he thinks his exhaustion, short temper, and irritability are normal.

Nicole feels more alert, more creative, and much happier when she gets at least eight hours of sleep every night. Getting a good night’s rest is one of the most important reasons for Nicole’s creative and insightful brain.

When Nicole writes for a few minutes before falling sleep, she is generally in a low beta. When she puts the book down, turns off the light, and closes her eyes, her brainwaves immediately slow from beta to alpha. When she falls asleep, her brainwaves go from alpha to theta to delta a few minutes later. Delta waves are up to ten times slower than the beta waves Nicole produces when she is active during the day.

During the course of an eight-hour sleep, our brains continually transition between higher brainwave activity or rapid eye movement sleep ( REM ) to slower brainwave activity, non-rapid eye movement sleep ( NREM ). This change takes place about every 90 minutes, as often as four or five times during an eight-hour period. While our brains transition back and forth, they are performing at least two vital tasks: neural harvesting and memory consolidation.

Although we experience short periods of REM sleep the first half of an eight-hour period, the first four hours are primarily spent in NREM sleep, the deeper sleep where the brain waves slow down considerably. During this slower period, the brain does its neural housecleaning: cutting, clipping, and dissolving the clutter of needless neurons that inhibit the brain and limit creativity and insight.

Neuroscientist Matthew Walker says, “A key function of deep NREM sleep, which predominates early in the night, is to do the work of weeding out and removing unnecessary neural connections.” 57

In addition to neurons, the brain is primarily made up of glial cells that insulate, surround, and support the neurons. Glial cells outnumber neurons by about ten to one. Microglial cells perform essential housecleaning tasks. Like a gardener trimming overgrown trees to increase the production of higher quality fruit, microglial cells cut and eliminate fragile neurons, so the brain can produce and store higher quality thought. If this tidying up did not take place, the brain would quickly run out of room to process thoughts and ideas.

New neurons and connections that haven’t been reinforced by continual use or those thoughts that haven’t been mentally tagged as being important get trimmed and eliminated by the microglial cells. Once the housecleaning has been done, the brain is prepared to address, organize, and store the thoughts and ideas generated during REM sleep.

The slower, steadier pattern of deep NREM sleep enhances communication among distant regions of the brain, allowing them to collaborate by sending and receiving experiences and information in preparation for the brain to do its work of memory consolidation.

Memory consolidation is the brain’s amazing ability to identify, organize, and move important and newly acquired information from short-term to long-term memory. Part of this work involves connecting and linking old and novel information together in brand new ways, which is a great definition of creativity.

While we move between NREM sleep and REM sleep, the length of the intervals between the two shifts considerably during an eight-hour period. During the first half of the night, our brains are primarily concerned with NREM sleep, when neural harvesting and the sharing of information takes place. The second half of the night, we primarily experience REM sleep. We actively dream during REM sleep, and it is during this dreaming period that memory consolidation and other critical unconscious activities take place.

Walker says that REM dreaming delivers “intelligent information processing that inspires creativity and promotes problem solving.” 58

In one research project, Walker and Robert Stickgold, his associate at Harvard Medical School, found their subjects could solve 15 to 35 percent more puzzles when emerging from REM sleep when compared with those who solved the puzzles during daytime waking hours or who were awakened from NREM sleep in the middle of the night. 59

Many creative people have credited some of their most original work to a good night’s rest. English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne “sat down early one night to write a poem. To his astonishment, no matter how he forced the issue, the poem would not come. He retired to bed in disgust. Upon waking in the morning, he wrote the Ballad of Dreamland without a halt.” 60

It’s surprising how much clearer one’s thinking becomes after a good night’s rest. Author John Steinbeck said, “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.”

When Nicole wakes up in the morning, she tries to stay in the theta state for five to fifteen minutes, which often allows her to experience a free flow of ideas about yesterday’s events, to contemplate the activities of the forthcoming day, and to enjoy insights like Steinbeck describes. She does this by lying in bed and keeping her head clear of active thought. This time can be an extremely productive period of creative mental activity.

When you dream at night or wake in the morning with greater mental clarity and new ideas, you can thank the brain’s glial cells and the REM sleep time for making it happen.

We think we have too much to do to waste our time sleeping, but this attitude is a huge mistake. If you go to bed at midnight and get up at 6:00 AM , you lose anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of your vital REM sleep time, the time when the brain turns on its healing and problem-solving power. Make a commitment to get a full night’s sleep, and teach your children to do the same. Remove the technology tools that keep you and your children up late. Your brain will thank you with sharper thinking and more creative ideas.

Because the act of dreaming is one of the primary ways the brain consolidates and organizes information, pay attention to your dreams. As you dream, your logical processes shut down and your creative centers engage. In this state, your mind creates new neural pathways and connects ideas in new ways.

Keep a notebook by your bed to capture what you dream about. Over time, patterns will emerge that can provide insights into your questions and concerns. For one week, track your dreams and see what interesting problem-solving work goes on in your brain while you sleep. In the mornings as you transition from sleeping to waking, give yourself at least ten minutes in bed to let your unhindered thoughts flow. Allow your newly-consolidated unconscious brain to share the previous night’s connections with your conscious brain. Write your thoughts in your journal and look for patterns, insights, and imaginative solutions.