Increased creative thinking in narcolepsy

Abstract

Some studies suggest a link between creativity and rapid eye movement sleep. Narcolepsy is characterized by falling asleep directly into rapid eye movement sleep, states of dissociated wakefulness and rapid eye movement sleep (cataplexy, hypnagogic hallucinations, sleep paralysis, rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder and lucid dreaming) and a high dream recall frequency. Lucid dreaming (the awareness of dreaming while dreaming) has been correlated with creativity. Given their life-long privileged access to rapid eye movement sleep and dreams, we hypothesized that subjects with narcolepsy may have developed high creative abilities. To test this assumption, 185 subjects with narcolepsy and 126 healthy controls were evaluated for their level of creativity with two questionnaires, the Test of Creative Profile and the Creativity Achievement Questionnaire. Creativity was also objectively tested in 30 controls and 30 subjects with narcolepsy using the Evaluation of Potential Creativity test battery, which measures divergent and convergent modes of creative thinking in the graphic and verbal domains, using concrete and abstract problems. Subjects with narcolepsy obtained higher scores than controls on the Test of Creative Profile (mean ± standard deviation: 58.9 ± 9.6 versus 55.1 ± 10, P = 0.001), in the three creative profiles (Innovative, Imaginative and Researcher) and on the Creative Achievement Questionnaire (10.4 ± 25.7 versus 6.4 ± 7.6, P = 0.047). They also performed better than controls on the objective test of creative performance (4.3 ± 1.5 versus 3.7 ± 1.4; P = 0.009). Most symptoms of narcolepsy (including sleepiness, hypnagogic hallucinations, sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming, and rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, but not cataplexy) were associated with higher scores on the Test of Creative Profile. These results highlight a higher creative potential in subjects with narcolepsy and further support a role of rapid eye movement sleep in creativity.

Lucid Dreaming, Nightmares, and Sleep Paralysis: Associations With Reality Testing Deficits and Paranormal Experience/Belief

“…Particularly, higher dream recall frequency and lucid dreaming (Dodet et al, 2015;Rak et al, 2015). Recent work has also reported an association between narcolepsy and creativity (Lacaux et al, 2019). Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness, disrupted nocturnal sleep, REM sleep occurring at the onset of sleep, and cataplexy (sudden loss of skeletal muscle tone in response to strong emotional stimuli) (Singh et al, 2013).…”

Sleep of Children with High Potentialities: A Polysomnographic Study

“…With its slow-waves and spindles, non-rapid eyes movement (NREM) sleep represents the key-phenomena in these mechanisms. However, rapid eyes movement (REM) sleep per se might favor spreading the activation of a memory trace within cortical regions, leading to a reorganization of associative networks, helping to form new associations and reaching new solutions [ 15 , 16 ].…”

<p>Creativity in Narcolepsy Type 1: The Role of Dissociated REM Sleep Manifestations</p>

“…5 Given the features of abnormal REM sleep manifestation in narcolepsy, with privileged access to sleep and dreaming, a recent study assessed whether lucid dreaming (the phenomenon of being aware of dreaming during the dream) could influence creative abilities. 6,7 The authors showed that narcolepsy patients have a higher creative potential compared to controls, both in terms of creative profile and of creative achievement. Moreover, narcoleptic patients showed an overall better creative performance in an objective test that evaluated creative abilities, in particular, they scored higher in an integrative task (measuring ideas' originality) and tended to achieve better scores in a divergent task (measuring the ability to produce multiple ideas) compared to controls.…”