Researchers have made a breakthrough that brings the idea of influencing dreams – similar to the movie Inception – closer to reality. They’ve found a method to guide dream content, potentially boosting creativity and problem-solving skills while people sleep.
The popular sci-fi film Inception features a skilled thief, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who extracts secrets from people’s dreams and even tries to implant ideas. Although we can’t do that in reality – yet – recent studies show that dreams can be influenced in ways that impact our thoughts and behavior the following day.
Scientists at Northwestern University wanted to find out if they could influence the content of people’s dreams and whether doing so could help them come up with solutions to problems.
Before going to sleep, volunteers worked on difficult puzzles, each paired with its own sound.
Researchers studied brain activity while people slept in the lab. They played sounds related to unsolved puzzles during the REM stage of sleep – the time when most vivid dreams occur – to see what would happen.
Researchers noticed slight changes in some sleeping participants – like little sniffles or eye movements – which suggested they were reacting to sounds within their dreams.
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The results suggested the method worked.
Of the 12 people who heard puzzle-related sounds during their sleep, the majority said they dreamt about those puzzles. The next day, they were twice as likely to solve the puzzles compared to when they hadn’t been exposed to the audio cues – their success rate jumped from 20% to 40%.
People were 42% successful at solving puzzles that they had also seen in their dreams, but only 17% successful with puzzles they hadn’t dreamed about. Researchers think this suggests our brains might keep trying to solve problems even while we’re asleep.
Sleep studies confirmed these findings. Participants often dreamt about the puzzles they were given, or their dreams showed them actively working to find solutions.
According to Northwestern University neuroscientist Karen Konkoly, even while not fully aware, a person in a dream asked a character within the dream for help with a puzzle we had presented.
Others reportedly dreamed of forests or jungles after being cued with related tasks.
One of the people who figured out the puzzle the next day remembered being in a dream where they were fishing in a river with a net, and that they were also working on a puzzle of some kind.
I was searching through a dresser and found some papers with puzzles on them. I managed to solve one, and a small animation played as a reward, they explained.
The study suggests that dreaming during REM sleep might be important for boosting creativity and helping us solve problems.
Professor Padilla believes that understanding how our brains come up with new ideas could bring us closer to solving important problems, and that studying and improving sleep might be a key part of that process.
Although we can’t yet control dreams like in the movie Inception, researchers are optimistic that a technique called targeted memory reactivation could one day help us understand and improve things like emotional control, learning processes, and mental wellbeing.
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2026-02-25 20:50