REM--Making the Connection
How and why do dreams often seem to address waking concerns? How does the dreaming brain develop new ideas and solutions? 
Ernest Hartmann believes that the “nets of the mind,” the complex network of linked neurons on the cerebral cortex, are responsible for how new material and novel connections and associations are introduced during dreams:
The making of connections simultaneously smoothes out disturbances in the mind by
integrating new material . . . and also produces more and broader connections by weaving
in new material . . . . These new connections, or increased connections are what make
dreaming useful in problem solving, as well as in scientific and artistic creation (4).
It appears that during the 3-5 cycles of REM sleep, a period of atypical and unique dreams and an abundance of imagery and metaphor, could be instrumental in the making of new connections, and coming up with creative concepts.
Hartmann associates the REM state with a merging and “loosening of categories” and “thin boundaries” (90). To understand the creative value of the REM stage, researchers at Harvard Medical School conducted a study about problem solving and whether their subjects showed cognitive flexibility, the ability of coming up with less traditional, stereotypical answers and finding more unique solutions to problems. The dream researchers in the Harvard study regard cognitive flexibility as utilizing more “associative based mechanisms to form novel relationships such as those employed in problem solving and creative thinking” in contrast to the rigid, factual waking life (Walker et al. 317).
Sixteen college students were given four anagram tests throughout the night: before sleep, ten minutes into NREM sleep, ten minutes into REM sleep and thirty minutes after awakening (318-319). Their scores were tabulated and the researchers discovered that REM scores were 32% higher than the scores from NREM sleep (322). The study published in Cognitive Brain Research concluded that “the neurophysiology of REM sleep represents a brain state more amenable to flexible cognitive processing than NREM” (317). But why do artists and writers benefit from cognitive flexibility? The answer lies in the development of metaphor.
Read more:
Introduction--The Committee of Sleep
Dream Incubation
REM--Making the Connection
REM--The Royal Road to Metaphor
Hypnagogic Dreams
Writer's Block
The Little People
Suggested Readings
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