Northwestern University have found a fascinating way to activate problem-solving during sleep. In a study published in the journal Psychological Science, the researchers explained how they used sound cues to stimulate information processing in sleeping participants. When the volunteers woke up the next day, they were able to work out the brainteasers they failed to solve the previous night. “This study provides yet more evidence that brain processing during sleep is helpful to daytime cognition,” said senior author Mark Beeman of Northwestern’s Stimulating problem solving with sound cues Beeman and his colleagues said that solving a difficult problem can be a matter of building new combinations of known elements to reveal a solution. Based on this premise, the researchers hypothesized that there could be a problem-solving strategy similar to the reorganization of memory during sleep.