Author's Introduction
- Each night as you lay down to sleep, you embark on an extraordinary journey – not through space, but through the shifting terrain of your own consciousness. This transition, known as the sleep-onset period, is not a simple flick of a switch from wakefulness to slumber, but a gradual, nuanced shift that suspends you between two worlds. Long regarded as a mere prelude to sleep, recent studies suggest there is far more to this fascinating twilight period.
- Your brain doesn’t simply power off as you fall asleep; instead, it enters a captivating liminal state, hovering between wakefulness and sleep. Imagine your brain as a metropolis at twilight, where different neighbourhoods dim their lights and quieten at staggered times. The journey begins in the subcortical regions, the deeper, hidden parts of the brain. From there, like ripples spreading across a pond, drowsiness progresses to the cortex (the brain’s outer layer), moving gradually from front to back. This entire process of sequential brain region shutdown can take up to 20 minutes.
- The phased descent into sleep explains why you might not recall the last few moments before dosing off while watching TV or reading. The parts of your brain responsible for processing scenes or flipping pages remain active, even after other areas, particularly deeper ones, including the thalamus and hippocampus, have already slipped into slumber, disrupting your ability to form new memories of those final minutes.
- During this process, the brain oscillates between various short-lived states within seconds, resembling a swing that moves back and forth – sometimes nearing wakefulness, at other times leaning towards sleep. These fluctuations are unique to the sleep-onset period. If we were to take a snapshot of the brain at this time, we would observe not only an in-between state, with parts of the brain awake and others asleep, but also a constantly changing landscape of activity. Indeed, each person’s process of falling asleep is as unique as their fingerprint.
Author's Conclusion
- You too could enjoy the creative benefits of sleep onset – all it takes is a short nap! Indeed, in another recent study that my colleagues and I conducted, we showed that participants who snoozed for around one minute were subsequently three times more likely to discover a sudden solution to a problem compared with those who stayed awake or went into deeper sleep. We were even able to predict whether a participant would experience an ‘aha’ moment simply based on their brain activity during the resting period. The ideal creative cocktail was found in that liminal state between wakefulness and sleep, consisting of a moderate level of alpha brain waves (a marker of drowsiness) and a low level of delta waves (a marker of sleep depth).
- Building on these insights, other researchers are developing tools to explore and harness the creative potential of the sleep onset period. One such innovation, developed by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a glove they call Dormio that’s equipped with sensors to detect the exact moment a person falls asleep by monitoring heart rate, muscle tone and skin conductance. When the glove detects the onset of sleep, it triggers an alarm to rouse the participant. In one experiment, the team used the device to prompt participants to think about a specific word – ‘tree’ – as they drifted off to sleep. The participants subsequently mentioned seeing trees in their hypnagogic experiences, and they demonstrated more creativity in tree-related creative tasks. In exploiting the journey into sleep, it seems that Edison and Dalí were on to something. If you want to explore the hypnagogic landscape for yourself, why not try their method of holding an object when you take a nap?
- Recent research is casting new light on the wake-to-sleep transition, revealing a unique liminal space during which both the body and mind undergo a series of dynamic and profound changes. Brain activity slows down, muscles relax, heart rate lowers, consciousness and responsiveness to the environment fluctuate, and rich dreamlike experiences emerge. This period represents a window into critical cognitive functions, such as memory but also into the emergence of creative sparks.
- The next time you find yourself lying awake, remember that you are not just waiting to fall asleep – you are standing at the threshold of an extraordinary journey.
Author Narrative
- Célia Lacaux completed her PhD at the Paris Brain Institute. She now holds a postdoctoral position at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where she continues to investigate the impact of sleep on creativity.
Notes
- This Paper is interesting - if brief. Indeed, so brief that I've quoted most of it.
- As I have a long nap each day, usually for 90 minutes, I thought I'd read this and see what it had to say.
- It suggests that a brief doze is good for creativity, and this may well be so. But so is any moving away from a problem and then returning to it later. The problem is that we often don't get that luxury - we're put on the spot. But if a problem is difficult, you're stuck, and it's not urgent, then it's best not to keep trying to force it. Just common sense.
- This sounds like a quicker 'reset button'.
- It doesn't fit well with my napping programme. My intention is always to catch up on sleep (I only have 6 hours overnight). I fall asleep really quickly (or if I don't, I never remember any of the pre-sleep events). Usually, it's 'head hits pillow and gone'. Maybe I could try napping when I'm not tired? Sounds like a frustrating waste of time.
- Given how many people have sleep problems, and my regime works just fine for me, I'm not going to fix what's not broke.
- There are a few reflective Aeon Comments.
- This relates to my Note on Sleep and - maybe - Consciousness, Memory and Intelligence.
Comment:
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)