preview

The Benefits Of Sleeping On A Problem Essay

Better Essays

The Benefits of Sleeping on a Problem Introduction If you’re like most people, you have probably been told, when you’re struggling with a problem or decision, that it’s a good idea to sleep on it. It’s something that people say so frequently that it has become something of a cliché. Like most clichés, though, it turns out that there’s some truth to it. In 1865, a German chemist named Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz solved a problem that had been puzzling scientists for decades. He published a paper identifying the structure of benzene as a ring of carbon atoms. Years later, when he was giving a talk about how he made his breakthrough discovery, he credited it to a dream he’d had. In the dream, he saw an image of a serpent swallowing its own tail, something that is called ouroboros. The symbol dates back to early Indian, Egyptian and Greek mythology. The sight of the symbol revealed the ring-like structure of benzene to him. Von Stradonitz is not alone. History is littered with similar examples. Human beings sometimes wake up with the solution to a complex problem, something they have been wrestling with, clear in their heads. Why does this happen? Is there scientific merit to the idea of sleeping on a problem? In this article, we will explore the notion that sleeping on a problem can help us solve it. It’s a somewhat complex topic, but one worth investigating. The first key to understanding what happens in our brains while we sleep is to talk about why we need

Get Access