

Sleep on it, but only if it is difficult: Effects of sleep on problem solving - bane
http://www.springerlink.com/content/7802xn5815616nwl/

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cgag
I was immediately reminded of Rich Hickey's talk, hammock driven development:
<http://blip.tv/clojure/hammock-driven-development-4475586>.

It sounds like he was onto something with the waking mind being being prone to
finding local maxima, but the background/sleeping mind being good for
branching out and finding other solutions.

edit: Actually it looks like he cited scientific american talking about the
sleeping brain finding relations between problems, I only remembered the bits
about strengthening memory.

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secure
The item is behind a paywall.

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bernatfp
Is there any chance we can get access to this article without having to pay?

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hvass
The PDF is available for free?
[http://www.springerlink.com/content/7802xn5815616nwl/fulltex...](http://www.springerlink.com/content/7802xn5815616nwl/fulltext.pdf)

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greenyoda
I just get a paywall when I click on this link.

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hvass
I got the full text. Here is a Dropbox link to it: <http://bit.ly/PumkzJ>

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andrewcooke
thanks to hvass (the link is to a paywalled site), the basic idea is:

\- some tasks require "lateral thinking". the example given is: what joins the
words "lick", "sprinkle", "mine"? maybe lateral thinking is the wrong
expression, but the idea is that the solution requires making connections from
unrelated "semantic areas"

\- people guess that the brain has a network-like approach where "activation"
starts at nodes associated with the different concepts ("sprinkle", etc) and
slowly spreads outwards, until, presumably, all three growing (glowing? ;o)
areas meet at "salt".

\- sleep helps for these tasks, but not for easier ones.

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Raliaga
A related, long yet interesting, article is this one
<http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm>

