Scientists are just now showing that there is merit in “sleeping on it” when it comes to problem solving.

From Coleridge’s epic Kubla Khan to Mendeleyev’s periodic table of elements, it’s long been believed that sleep can help fuel artistic creativity and scientific insight.

A recent experiment designed by German neurologists at the University of Lubeck now provides scientific proof for the phenomenon.

For their study, the researchers recruited 66 students to do a memory task. The students were taught two simple rules to help them convert a string of eight digits into a new order.

By following the two rules, the calculation took seven steps.

But there was a third way to solve the problem almost instantly, which the students weren’t taught.

The human guinea pigs were trained, then tested and after eight hours, retested. During the eight-hour period, half the group slept, while the other half were awake.

During retesting, sleep was found to have worked wonders. Sixty per cent of those who slept discovered the secret rule, compared to 22 per cent among those who stayed awake.

I suppose most of us had already arrived at this conclusion empirically, but science has to take a more methodical approach.