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Boosting Creativity Using Hypnagogia (Edison; Dali)

The Slashdot posting points to a new article in Science that describes an experiment in which subjects indeed seemed to improve problem-solving performance when interrupted from a hypnagogic state. This tactic is cited with regard to Thomas Edison, but it seems Salvador Dali also claimed to have used the technique.
Edison was right: Waking up right after drifting off to sleep can boost creativity

The state between wakefulness and sleep is a sweet spot for problem-solving

When Thomas Edison hit a wall with his inventions, he would nap in an armchair while holding a steel ball. As he started to fall asleep and his muscles relaxed, the ball would strike the floor, waking him with insights into his problems. Or so the story goes.

Now, more than 100 years later, scientists have repeated the trick in a lab, revealing that the famous inventor was on to something. People following his recipe tripled their chances of solving a math problem. The trick was to wake up in the transition between sleep and wakefulness, just before deep sleep.

“It is a wonderful study,” says Ken Paller, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University who was not part of the research. Prior work has shown that passing through deep sleep stages helps with creativity, he notes, but this is the first to explore in detail the sleep-onset period and its role in problem-solving.

In this transitional period, we are not quite awake, but also not deeply asleep. It can be as short as a minute and occurs right when we start to doze off. Our muscles relax, and we have dreamlike visions or thoughts called hypnagogia, generally related to recent experiences. This phase slips by unnoticed most of the time unless it is interrupted by waking. Like Edison, surrealist painter Salvador Dalí believed interrupting sleep’s onset could boost creativity. (He used a heavy key instead of a metal ball.) ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.science.org/content/art...ght-after-drifting-sleep-can-boost-creativity
 
The experiment indicated this improved problem-solving was specific to interruption during the hypnagogic state, and it didn't happen if subjects were allowed to slip farther into deeper sleep states.
The researchers didn’t see any connection between the content of people’s visions and their performance on the task. But looking at brain activity, they found that those who napped and were interrupted during the first phase of sleep were three times better at finding the hidden key to the problem than those who remained awake. Twenty out of 24 of these nappers (83%) found the key, versus only 15 out of the 59 (30%) that stayed awake, the researchers report today in Science Advances.

The creative effect happened even for people who spent just 15 seconds in the first sleep stage. But the trick didn’t work for those who reached later stages of sleep. “Our findings suggest there is a creative sweet spot during sleep onset,” says author Delphine Oudiette, a sleep researcher at the Paris Brain Institute. “It is a small window which can disappear if you wake up too early or sleep too deep.”

Contrary to the Edison tale, the eureka moment didn’t come immediately after waking in this study. People took on average 94 trials of the math test after the nap to have an insight. “It is not like you can take a power nap and wake up with a solution right away,” Oudiette says.
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FULL STORY: https://www.science.org/content/art...ght-after-drifting-sleep-can-boost-creativity
 
The Science article notes that the research has just been published in Science Advances. Here are the bibliographic details and abstract from the published study. The full research report is accessible at the link below.

Sleep onset is a creative sweet spot
CÉLIA LACAUX, THOMAS ANDRILLON, CÉLESTE BASTOUL, YANNIS IDIR, ALEXANDRINE FONTEIX-GALET, SABELLE ARNULF, AND DELPHINE OUDIETTE
SCIENCE ADVANCES, 8 Dec 2021, Vol 7, Issue 50.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj5866

Abstract
The ability to think creatively is paramount to facing new challenges, but how creativity arises remains mysterious. Here, we show that the brain activity common to the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness (nonrapid eye movement sleep stage 1 or N1) ignites creative sparks. Participants (N = 103) were exposed to mathematical problems without knowing that a hidden rule allowed solving them almost instantly. We found that spending at least 15 s in N1 during a resting period tripled the chance to discover the hidden rule (83% versus 30% when participants remained awake), and this effect vanished if subjects reached deeper sleep. Our findings suggest that there is a creative sweet spot within the sleep-onset period, and hitting it requires individuals balancing falling asleep easily against falling asleep too deeply.

SOURCE / FULL REPORT: https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.abj5866
 
This 2017 HuffPost article reviews the story of Edison manipulating his hypnagogic state to boost creativity or help solve problems.
Thomas Edison's Secret Trick to Maximize His Creativity by Falling Asleep

Thomas Edison has attributed many of his insights into his experiments and new discoveries to a state of awareness and thinking he reached when entering what is known as a hypnogogic state ... Edison would nap famously under his desk or on a work bench for up to 1 hour sometimes 3 times per day. Edison would generally hold two steel balls in both hands when he was preparing to sleep and was challenged by a daunting large problem. Some naps he would be sitting upright in a chair. Sitting up made it a bit harder for him to fully sleep allowing him to stay lightly conscious during these sessions. On the floor he placed directly below his closed hands metal saucers. The premise was simple, as he entered into the hypnogogic state, the body generally goes through a series of muscle reactions from a loosening to a sort of paralysis. In this transition Edison would drop the steel balls and the would crash to the floor, hitting the metal saucers for added effect and produce loud sound to awaken him. He would then be awakened by the sound and have a ready pad and pencil to record anything that he was thinking of just before being awakened. ...

Edison kept this technique rather private for most of his life, although some of his workers knew about his system and at times would be ready to transcribe his thoughts upon awakening. ...
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SOURCE: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/thom...ize-his-creativity_b_59f4d276e4b06ae9067ab91c
 
Interestingly, the HuffPost article suggests a statue of Edison at the Edison Ford Estates in Fort Myers, Florida, provides a sly allusion to his hypnagogic technique. Here is a photo of the statue and the relevant HuffPost passage ...

Statue-EdisonFordEstates.jpg

SOURCE: http://www.artswfl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/003-32.jpg​
The Edison & Ford Winter Estates, a shared vacation spot between best friends Henry Ford and Edison in Fort Myers, Florida has a statue of Edison is located under the banyan tree given to Edison by Harvey Firestone dedicated in 2005 that shows Edison holding a shiny stainless steel ball in his left hand.

Edison designed the garden where his statute now resides. He was meticulous in how it was to be presented. There is anecdotal information that tends to favor the concept of the statue and the location where it would be placed posthumously. ...

The die cast aluminum statue contrasts greatly to the glistening steel ball held by Edison. Although many biographers and historians do not record Edison’s work in the hypnogogic state, they simply state he napped quite a bit. Those close to him knew the very important part it played in his life as a creative inventor and may have acted on his wishes to display a statue with a “hidden in plain sight” homage to his use of the stainless steel balls and how it changes his life and the world. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/thom...ize-his-creativity_b_59f4d276e4b06ae9067ab91c
 
Now here's some contrasting evidence that suggests one might well wonder whether or to what extent the napping while holding metal balls story may be folklore rather than fact.

There is another - quite similar - Edison statue at Florida SouthWestern State College, also in Fort Myers. This second statue also shows him with a shiny sphere in his left hand. However, the plaque beside this statue gives an entirely different explanation for the sphere's significance / symbolism ...

Statue-Edison@FLCollege.jpeg

Plaque-EdisonStatue@FLCollege.jpeg
The silver plaque next to the sculpture states, “The silver ball in his hand is emblematic of Edison’s remarkable mind. It spins, signifying his relentless intellectual curiosity and willingness to examine a problem from all sides.”
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SOURCE: https://heathersthoughts.home.blog/2019/02/03/
 
This 2013 web article describes the exploitation of hypnagogia by Dali and attributes the practice to other creative persons as well.
How Dali, Einstein, And Aristotle Perfected The Power Nap

What did Einstein, Aristotle, and Salvador Dali have in common? All three of these three great minds knew how to use a little bit of sleep to inspire great ideas.

Take this appropriately absurd image for example: Salvador Dali, the master of surrealism, is slouching in his chair. In his right hand he holds a key. Beneath his hand is an upside-down plate. Once he falls into a deep sleep, his hand releases the key which clangs onto the plate and the painter awakes with a start, refreshed and ready to get weird.

For Dali, the time between the release of the key and the clank of the plate (coupled with the drifting off beforehand) is more than enough to throw yourself back at the canvas. As he writes in the 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship:
The moment the key drops from your fingers, you may be sure that the noise of its fall on the upside-down plate will awaken you, and you may be equally sure that this fugitive moment when you had barely lost consciousness and during which you cannot be assured of having really slept is totally sufficient, inasmuch as not a second more is needed for your physical and psychic being to be revivified by just the necessary amount of repose. ...
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This little lifehack of the micronap, which Dali said should not be longer than a quarter second, is also attributed to Einstein and Aristotle. Fascinatingly, sleep research is beginning to explicitly confirm what these three geniuses implicitly understood ...

FULL STORY: https://www.fastcompany.com/3023078/how-dali-einstein-and-aristotle-perfected-the-power-nap
 
Waking me just as I drop off to sleep is less likely to boost my creativity than it is to boost the chances of the person waking me getting a black eye.
 
I think that the metal ball notice can be true, in Spain Salvador Dali developed a technic of awake at that point that can be similar: He after the dinner sit on a couch leting the empty dinner plate on the floor close to the couch arm, in the hand he held the dinner metal spoon, and then he tried to nap, but when the nap start to get too deep he lost the control over the hand so the spoon fell down over the plate, that was very noisy so he awake suddenly.
He tried to reach the images that apear at high speed when we start to get asleep.
Is a very easy technic that anyone can try at home.
 
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When my father was in the army, sentinels would hold a large set of keys in their hand. If they fell asleep, the sound of keys crashing on the ground would wake them.
 
It's a easy technic to try, it could be hacked for esoteric purposes simply by giving instructions of the images to show something remote in time or in space.
 
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