Both Salvador Dalí and Thomas Edison are said to have used dreams to stoke their creative process. To spark new ideas, the men would let themselves drift off to sleep for just a few moments, and then wake up and note the dreamlike visions they had on the brink of unconsciousness.
But you may have heard that dreams happen only in a stage called rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. So is it possible to dream during other stages of sleep, as Dali and Edison supposedly did??
Although dreams in different sleep stages can take on different forms, REM sleep is definitely not the only time we dream, experts told Live Science. “The belief that dreams are only associated with REM sleep comes from people who are not familiar with the subject in detail, or who have somewhat outdated knowledge,” Isabelle Arnulf, a sleep neurologist at Sorbonne University in Paris, told Live Science in an email.
“Writer Fuel” is a series of cool real-world stories that might inspire your little writer heart. Check out our Writer Fuel page on the LimFic blog for more inspiration.
