Abstract
Is there a relationship between creativity and dreaming? Dreaming has been postulated to represent a functional intrapersonal component of the creative experience. While it seems that creativity can emerge spontaneously as an individual wanders from one topic to another, free from the demands of pursuing a defined task. There are also many examples of famous creative ideas and discoveries that are said to have occurred during a dream. When dreaming, human beings can interact with what they take to be other individuals and things, and, in certain respects, the same happens in the virtual world. The digital revolution is transforming contemporary society. The progress being made in behavioral-basic robotics is opening new fields of innovative investigation. In this challenging context, machine dreaming is a new research field. Indeed, machine inactivity can be assimilated to the sleep state of living beings. In this chapter, the theme of creativity and dreaming is discussed, also in light of emerging developments in the neurosciences and artificial intelligence.
TopIntroduction
Sleeping for human beings is a necessary restorative process. If one does not get enough sleep, one becomes easily distracted and irritable. Prolonged periods of sleep deprivation may cause difficulties in social interaction and emotional control. The economic burden of insufficient sleep represents a veritable problem in industrialized countries. According to certain studies (Hafner, Stepanek, Taylor, Troxel, & Van Stolk, 2017), the proportion of people sleeping less than the recommended number of hours is rising, and this results largely from lifestyle factors brought about by our modern 24/7 society such as psychosocial stress, alcohol consumption, smoking, lack of physical activity, and excessive use of electronic media, among other issues.
Sleep can be defined as:
[…] a restorative process that is brain state regulated, reversible, homeostatic, embedded in a circadian and social-physiology organization and involving a species-specific quiescent posture, some amount of perceptual disengagement, and elevated around thresholds. (McNamara, 2019, p. 6)
Circadian and social-physiology refer to the fact that a period of sleep occurs during every 24-hour cycle and accords to socio-cultural habits.
Sleeping is an activity common to all mammals and birds and, in some form, also reptiles and even invertebrates as well. In fact, all living organisms, bacteria and plants included, have a daily period of rest and inactivity. Plants cease their photosynthesis activity at night. This is due not only to the absence of sunlight, but is also related to their circadian rhythm (Horne & Horne, 2006). One cannot, however, affirm that their inactive phase corresponds to sleeping.
The insertion of dreaming into the discipline of physiology can be pinpointed to the 1950s when Aserinsky and Kleitman (1953) connected the psychological phenomenon of dreaming with the physiological phenomenon of the periodic occurrence of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep during the night.
Dreaming is considered a sleep-dependent activity. Dreams are thoughts and mental images that occur during sleep. However, sleep is not a uniform function in human beings. Four distinct stages of sleep have been identified, based on the analysis of brain activity during sleep. One is characterized by REM sleep and the other three by non-REM (NREM) sleep. Usually, REM sleep happens around 90 minutes after one falls asleep. The first period of REM typically lasts 10 minutes, with each of the subsequent stages getting longer, and the final stage of REM lasting up to one hour.
Dreams are deemed to be independent of the individual’s will. They occur irrespectively of whether one wants to dream or not. Modern psychology considers dreams to represent cognitive and symbolic events (Bulkeley, 2017; Hunt, 2017; Schredl, 2018). In the last few decades, new methods and techniques have been adopted for studying the different types and forms of dreaming, investigating the relationship between dreaming and other mental processes.
It is reported that scientists have dreamed the solutions to problems they were studying, and artists have drawn plot lines, visions, and music from their dreams. Indeed, it has been said of Albert Einstein that:
He dreamt that he was riding a sled down a steep, snowy slope and, as he approached the speed of light in his dream, the colors all blended into one. He spent much of his career, inspired by that dream, thinking about what happens at the speed of light. (LeClaire, 2018, p. 5)
While he was still a physics student, Niels Bohr had a dream in which a model of the atom was revealed (Finke, 1989). Many artists have claimed that their artifacts came to them from dreams. It seems, for example, that the melody to “Yesterday” came to Paul McCartney during a dream (Kadavy, 2018).
Dream-like imagery, such as sleeping dreams and hypnagogic experiences, has been reported with surprisingly high frequency in conjunction with scientific discoveries and artistic artifacts. A number of scientists, as well as artists, musicians, and writers have all reported experiencing mental imagery in conjunction with their having made significant creative discoveries (Polland, 1996).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Client-Centered Therapy: A non-directive form of talk therapy. In the Client-Centered Therapy, the therapist acts mainly as a guide or a source of support for the client. This therapy was developed by the psychologist and psychotherapist Carl Rogers during the 1940s and 1950s.
Surrealism: A cultural movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and was largely influenced by Dadaism, the avant-garde movement that claimed the superiority of irrationality to logic and calculated intents. Surrealism is best known for the artworks of the painters Salvador Dali, René Magritte, and Max Ernst.
Hypnagogic Experience: Hypnagogia is the transition between wakefulness and sleep. During the hypnagogic state, an individual may appear to be fully awake while they are sleeping as indicated by their brain waves. However, also, an individual may be completely aware of their state enabling lucid dream experience.
Visual Cortex: The area of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information. “A hallmark of high-level visual cortex is its functional organization of neighboring areas that are selective for single categories, such as faces, bodies, and objects. However, visual scenes are typically composed of multiple categories” ( Kliger & Yovel, 2020 , p. 7545).
Lucid Dream: A dream in which the dreamer is aware they are dreaming. Many people believe that lucid dreams are not actually dreams. How one can obtain awareness of the dream state is not clear.
Circadian Rhythms: Are 24-hour cycles that are part of the body’s internal clock, and coordinate mental and physical systems. One of the most important and well-known circadian rhythms is the sleep-wake cycle.
Oedipus Complex: In psychoanalytic theory, it is the desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex. Sigmund Freud introduced the concept in his Interpretation of dreams (1899). The term derives from the Greek legend of Oedipus the Theban hero, who unknowingly slew his father and married his mother. The story was dramatized in the Athenian tragedy Oedipus rex : (ancient Greek title: ??d?p??? ???a???? [Oedipus tyrant]) by Sophocles that was first performed around 429 BC.
Pre-Raphaelites: A secret society of young painters, founded in London in 1848, inspired by the theories of John Ruskin, who urged artists to ‘go to nature’. They were opposed to the Royal Academy’s promotion of the ideal, as exemplified in the works of Raphael.
Shamanism: A religious phenomenon centered on the shaman , a person considered able to harness various powers through trance or ecstatic religious experience. The shaman is believed to interact with spirits with the goal of directing spiritual energies into the physical world, for healing or other purposes.