Scientists are one step closer to turning Inception into reality after discovering a way to guide what people dream about and even help plant ideas that improve creativity and help solve problems.
In Christopher Nolan’s hit sci-fi movie, a professional thief played by Leonardo DiCaprio steals secrets through shared dreams and is later tasked with planting an idea in someone’s mind. While real life isn’t quite there yet, new research suggests dreams can be “hacked” in ways that affect thinking the next day.
Researchers at Northwestern University tested whether they could steer dreams toward specific topics and see if that helped people solve problems.
Before going to sleep, volunteers worked on difficult puzzles, each paired with its own sound.
While participants slept in a lab, researchers monitored their brain activity. During REM sleep, the stage most strongly linked to vivid dreaming, the team quietly replayed sounds linked to certain unsolved puzzles.
Some sleepers signaled they heard the sounds through small movements like sniffing or eye movements, indicating the cues were entering their dreams.
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The results suggested the method worked.
Among the 12 participants whose dreams were targeted with audio cues, most reported dreaming about the puzzles. Their success rate solving those problems the next day doubled from 20% to 40%.
Across all participants, puzzles that appeared in dreams were solved 42% of the time, compared to just 17% for puzzles that didn’t show up in dreams. Researchers believe this shows the brain may continue working on solutions during sleep.
Dream reports backed this up. Some participants described dreams that clearly reflected the prompted puzzles or showed their minds trying to solve them.
“Even without lucidity, one dreamer asked a dream character for help solving the puzzle we were cueing,” neuroscientist Karen Konkoly from Northwestern University said.
Others reportedly dreamed of forests or jungles after being cued with related tasks.
One dreamer who solved the puzzle the next morning recalled, “I was at a river and I was catching fish with a net… I was working on something… like a puzzle.”
“I was looking through a dresser and there were papers… The puzzles were on the papers that I was looking through… I solved one of them and I got like a little celebration,” another described.
The researchers say the findings support the idea that REM sleep could play a key role in creativity and problem-solving.
“By learning more about how our brains are able to think creatively, think anew, and generate creative new ideas, we could be closer to solving the problems we want to solve, and sleep engineering could help,” Professor Padilla added.
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