ArticleNeuroscience of consciousness2026
Creative problem-solving after experimentally provoking dreams of unsolved puzzles during REM sleep.
Article in Neuroscience of consciousness, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Inducing Lucid Dreaming Based on a Contemplative Practice of Compassion.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Memory, Sleep, Dreams, and Consciousness: A Perspective Based on the Memory Theory of Consciousness.Nature and science of sleep · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Dreams have arguably been a source of creative insight for millennia. The specific assertion that dreams during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep promote creative problem-solving, however, has only anecdotal support, lacking strong empirical support from rigorous studies. Experimental manipulations of dream content have been confounded by waking components, such that any boost in creative problem-solving could be attributable to waking cognition rather than sleep cognition. Likewise, correlational evidence cannot unequivocally establish that dreams cause insights. Evidence that memory reactivation during sleep promotes creative problem-solving is also insufficient for implicating dreaming
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.