Dali’s Secret Backed by Science – LeVif / L’Express on PC

Dali was said to be eccentric, eccentric and delirious. Now science comes to prove his recipe for creativity, one of the fifty magical secrets published by the Spanish artist in 1948. For flashes of genius, the painter from Cadaqués assured, nothing could be simpler: lock yourself into an armchair, a metal key in your left hand and a plate underneath. When you fall asleep, the switch will fall and a noise will be made when the pad is touched…

Dali was said to be eccentric, eccentric and delirious. Now science comes to prove his recipe for creativity, one of the fifty magical secrets published by the Spanish artist in 1948. For flashes of genius, the painter from Cadaqués assured, nothing could be simpler: lock yourself into an armchair, a metal key in your left hand and a plate underneath. When you fall asleep, the switch drops and the sound it makes when you touch the pad wakes you up. This fleeting moment between sleep and wakefulness will be the stage during which the brain gives its best. A team of neuroscientists from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) proved Daly right. The results of his study, conducted on 103 volunteers, were published in the journal Science last December. Each participant had to solve a complex mathematical problem. Those who immersed themselves in Dalynian’s minute precision for fifteen seconds had the best results (83% success), sometimes without even knowing how they came up with the solution. Those who slept soundly achieved a score of 30%. As for those who did not sleep, its results did not exceed 14%. According to the researchers, sleeping for a few seconds will allow you to plunge into a “hypnotic state”, between consciousness and sleep, in which the brain allows itself to freely associate. This stage of sleep is the pre-dreaming stage, when brain waves change from beta to alpha. The brain remains sensitive to external stimuli, such as the sound of a fly flying. In this particular case, severe and brief auditory and visual hallucinations occur. These are the things that fuel Dali’s creativity. In the United States, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are trying to find a way to achieve and prolong this state of hypnosis. Their device, called Dormio, hasn’t been developed, but it looks promising: a robot that keeps a sleeper at this stage of sleep, whispering a camel to him. A glove with sensors that allows the robot to verify that the subject is in a state of hypnosis … Continue.