Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Add Good to your Google News feed.
Google News Button

Scientists find a way to plant ideas in dreams through sound cues to improve problem solving

The results the following day were remarkable.

sleep, problem solving, neuroscience, scientific discovery, creativity

Scientists could implant ideas during R.E.M. sleep cycles.

Photo credit: Canva
Erik Barnes
By Erik BarnesFeb 18, 2026
Erik Barnes
See Full Bio

When making an important decision or attempting to solve a problem, many of us have been told to “sleep on it.” Before we make a decision or come to a conclusion, the best advice is usually to do so after a good night's rest. But what if that piece of advice turned into the standard procedure for thinking and creativity? Neuroscientists at Northwestern University found a way to manipulate dreams into certain directions by planting ideas using sound cues during REM sleep.

Not unlike the plot of Christopher Nolan’s film Inception, researchers were able to help "dream engineer" participants through targeted memory reactivation (TMR). Twenty participants were recruited for the experiment, in which they were asked to solve a series of brain teaser puzzles within a three minute time limit. The researchers had a different soundtrack for each puzzle. The majority of the puzzles went unsolved.

- YouTube youtu.be

When the participants slept in the lab overnight, the results the following day were remarkable.

During the participants’ REM sleep, the part of the sleep cycle open for lucid dreaming, the researchers played the soundtracks from half of the unsolved puzzles for the sleepers to hear as they rested. When they awoke the next day, twelve of the twenty participants reported that their dreams were referencing the specific puzzles prompted by the sound cues. Those same participants were able to solve those tough puzzles more than the others, increasing their problem solving abilities from 20% to 40% within a single night of sleep.

In short, the neuroscientists were able to successfully plant the idea of the puzzles into the dreams of the participants via the sound cues. In turn, the participants’ brains were working on solving the puzzles as they were sleeping. If this technique is refined, repeated, and retested, this could boost critical thinking and creativity in humans during their “off-hours” while reaping the brain rebooting benefits of a good night of sleep.

“Many problems in the world today require creative solutions. By learning more about how our brains are able to think creatively, think anew and generate creative new ideas, we could be closer to solving the problems we want to solve, and sleep engineering could help,” said Ken Paller, senior author of the study and director of the cognitive neuroscience program in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern.

According to Karen Konkoly, a post-doctoral researcher in Paller’s Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory and lead author of this study, the soundtracks had an impact on the participants during non-lucid dreams, too.

@popularmechanics

A look inside Northwestern University’s Sleep Lab, and how they study lucid dreaming. #dreams #luciddreams #luciddreaming #dreamtok

“Even without lucidity, one dreamer asked a dream character for help solving the puzzle we were cuing,’ said Konkoly. “Another was cued with the ‘trees’ puzzle and woke up dreaming of walking through a forest. Another dreamer was cued with a puzzle about jungles and woke up from a dream in which she was fishing in the jungle thinking about that puzzle.”

Konkoly and her peers were intrigued at how the brain could be influenced by outside forces during slumber.

“These were fascinating examples to witness because they showed how dreamers can follow instructions, and dreams can be influenced by sounds during sleep, even without lucidity.”

- YouTube youtu.be

It may be a while before all of this can be confirmed as repeatable, but if you're trying to solve a problem in the meantime, it may not hurt to put on a soundtrack while you try to sort it out and then play the song again on repeat as you take a nap.

brain teaser puzzlescognitive neuroscience studymemory reactivation techniquesleep engineering researchcritical thinking boostdreamslucid dreamssoundtrackmemoriesneurosciencerem sleepscientific discovery

The Latest

Microbiology, Gut microbiome, Aging, Inflammation, Microbiome, Microbes, Longevity, Gut microbes
Health

Your gut microbes can be anti-aging – scientists are uncovering how to keep your microbiome youthful

Education, Teachers, History of education, Job satisfaction, new teachers, Teacher
Culture

I asked students whether they’d want to be teachers? They quickly responded, ‘Why would I?’

job search tips, linkedin, workplace, job hunting, life hacks
Work & Money

Career expert shares 3 secret LinkedIn hacks to help people find a new job much faster

sleep, problem solving, neuroscience, scientific discovery, creativity
Science

Scientists find a way to plant ideas in dreams through sound cues to improve problem solving

More For You

olfactory heritage, historic scents, museum scent, Matija Strlic, Odeuropa, St Paul’s Cathedral, old book smell, GC-MS, mummy scent, Egyptian Museum Cairo, petrichor, Jan Brueghel, Prado exhibition, sensory history, fragrance archaeology, smellscapes, cultural heritage, conservation science, aroma research, visitor engagement

A custom collage-style graphic of historical paintings and artifacts illustrating the concept of smell throughout history.

hub.stackernewswire.com

Recreating the smells of history

Recreating the smells of history

We often learn about the past visually — through oil paintings and sepia photographs, books and buildings, artifacts displayed behind glass. And sometimes we get to touch historical objects or listen to recordings. But rarely do we use our sense of smell — our oldest, most primal way of learning about the environment — to experience the distant past.

Without access to odor, “you lose that intimacy that smell brings to the interaction between us and objects,” says analytical chemist Matija Strlič. As lead scientist of the Heritage Science Laboratory at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia and previously, deputy director of the Institute for Sustainable Heritage at University College London, Strlič has devoted his career to interdisciplinary research in the field of heritage science. Much of his work focused on the preservation and reconstruction of culturally significant scents, Knowable Magazine reports.

Keep ReadingShow less
fart, science discovery, gut health, bacteria, digestion

Analyzing the times you pass gas helps scientists study gut bacteria.

Photo credit: Canva

Scientists invent 'smart' underwear that tracks gut bacteria health through your farts

In the United States, gut health is a big deal. According to a 2022 survey by the American Gastroenterological Association, 40% of Americans deal with digestive problems that disrupt their day-to-day lives. Many try different diets and supplements to assuage these issues, as well as use probiotics to improve overall digestion—but there might be a better way. Scientists may have found a way to analyze and pinpoint potential digestive problems; all you need to do is put on some special underwear and fart.

Researchers at the University of Maryland wanted to find a better way to monitor and measure human gut bacteria in the name of microbiome research. While past methods allowed them to see what gut bacteria species are living in the human body, there was no accurate way to see what the gut bacteria was doing hour by hour. Well, they seem to have found a way: a pair of underwear with a tiny sensor clipped near the rear can now record data from a person’s flatulence.

Keep ReadingShow less
History, Archaeology, Mummy, Ancient Egypt, 3D scanning, Artifacts, Museum collections Egyptology, Provenance, Digital archaeology

The 3D scan of a mask fragment matches up with the scan of a different well-preserved mask.

3D scanning and shape analysis help archaeologists connect objects across space and time to recover their lost histories

Today the world of Egyptology faces a silent crisis – not of looting, although that plays a part, but of disconnection. Walk into any major museum, from Copenhagen to California, and you see glass cases filled with what could be called orphaned artifacts: remarkable objects, often acquired in the 19th and early 20th century, that have been completely stripped of their histories. You can see what they are – a mummy’s painted foot case, a golden mask – but we have no idea where they came from. They are beautiful, but historically they are mute.

Many objects entered museum collections at times when excavation and collecting practices were very different from today. In the past, excavated objects were often divided between institutions around the world, and display was prioritized over documentation. Over time, connections between pieces were lost. As a result, museums around the world hold remarkable artifacts whose backstories are thin, fragmentary or missing altogether.

Keep ReadingShow less
teeth, scientific discovery, evolution, chewing, fish

We may have found the creature responsible for our jaws.

Photo credit: Royal Society Publishing/Canva

New Arctic fossils could be the ancestor of all creatures that have jaws

Here’s some science news to chew on: the reason humans and other animals have jaws may have been revealed thanks to a recent fossil discovery. In the Arctic, a fossilized fish species has been found to have teeth on the bony plates lining the roof of its mouth. Not only does this mean scientists found that teeth and jaws appeared far earlier in evolution, but we may have found the grandmother of all jaw biters.

The Romundina gagnieri, a new species of 'acanthothoracid' fish from the Early Devonian of Arctic Canada, had tooth-bearing plates on skull fragments recovered from Arctic rocks. The 400 million year old fossils were found in 1995 on Prince of Wales Island on now-dry ancient sea beds. Initially, the researchers assumed that the plates on the skull fragments they recovered lacked true teeth due to the smoother surfaces.

Keep ReadingShow less
dinosaur, scientific discovery, fossils, evolution, science

New tiny dinosaur dropped!

Photo credit: @JurassicApparel on X/Canva

New species of chicken-sized dinosaur in Spain is changing the history of evolution

Our understanding of dinosaurs has changed over time. The “thunder lizards” are considered to be more related to birds than we previously thought. The brontosaurus went from existing to not existing to possibly existing. Now, a chicken-sized paleontology discovery could fill in a 70 million year old hole in fossil records.

Foskeia pelendonum is a small, chicken-sized plant eater with a “weird” skull that’s unique enough to change evolutionary trees and fill in a gap in dinosaur evolution. Discovered in Spain, the fossils were initially considered to be of a baby bipedal dinosaur. Upon closer inspection, however, they were found to be fully mature fossils of a new small species. The new herbivore dinosaur has been compared to the height of the modern chicken. It's also only 18-inches in length, contesting previous notions about how dinosaurs evolved due to its small size and unique features.

Keep ReadingShow less
kidney stones, health, Canadian, Waterloo, treatment, less invasive, medical breakthrough, urinary tract

Left: A scientist in a lab. Right: Kidney stones.

Photo credit: Canva and Jakupica/ Wikimedia Commons

Canadian scientists create magnetic robots that can dissolve kidney stones in days

If you didn't know, kidney stones are far more common than you might think. And the current treatment options aren't great. But Canada may be coming to the rescue.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a breakthrough treatment for kidney stones that uses robots as small as a grain of rice to target the stones.

Keep ReadingShow less
Children, Psychology, Neurology, Literacy, Reading, Creativity, Empathy, Teaching creativity, Bedtime Routine, Play and creativity, Bedtime story, Early literacy, empathy training, readers

A father reads a bedtime story to his daughter in 1955.

Lambert/Getty Images

Reading to young kids improves their social skills and a new study shows it doesn’t matter whether parents stop to ask questions

In 2024, 51% of families read aloud to their very young children, while 37% read aloud to their kids between the ages of 6 and 8 years old.

Some parents have said they stop reading aloud to their school-age children because their kids can read on their own.

Keep ReadingShow less
A giant star is changing before our eyes and astronomers are watching in real time

The red supergiant with its suspected smaller, hotter twin living alongside it.

SALT

A giant star is changing before our eyes and astronomers are watching in real time

For decades, astronomers have been watching WOH G64, an enormous heavyweight star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy visible with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere. This star is more than 1,500 times larger than the Sun and emitting over 100,000 times more energy. For a long time, red supergiant WOH G64 looked like a star steadily reaching the end of its life, shedding material and swelling in size as it began to run out of fuel.

Astronomers didn’t think its final demise would happen anytime soon, because no-one has ever seen a known red supergiant die. But in recent years astronomers – including our team working with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) – discovered that this star has started to change, growing dimmer than before and seemingly warmer. This has surprised scientists and suggests the star’s final stages of life may be more complicated, and perhaps unfold faster, than once thought.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026