This is Scientific American 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Antalyatta.

Salvador Dali had a peculiar way of refreshing his mind, something he called slumber with

a key. In his 1948 book, Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, he described how it worked.

You must see yourself in a bony armchair, preferably of Spanish style, he wrote. In your left

hand you were to clench a heavy key suspended above a plate, then he continued, you will have

merely to let yourself be progressively invaded by a serene afternoon sleep, like the spiritual

drop of anacet of your soul, rising in the cube of sugar of your body. As you drifted

off, the key would slip from your fingers and clang on the plate, awakening you. He claimed

the brief moments meant between wake and sleep would revive your physical and psychic being,

and he cautioned that, quote, a mere second is infinitely too long. Now Dali's mystical

sounding method has been, to some degree, vindicated by science. We show that the period

between wake and sleep is actually very inspiring for creativity, and napping with an object

in hand might help to taper into this creative sweet spot. Delphine Uriette is a sleep researcher

at the Paris Brain Institute. Since childhood, she's found it easy to slip into that zone between

wake and sleep. I try to sleep with a problem in mind, and then just let the images come

to me, and sometimes I have great ideas. But she was curious to find out why. So she

and her colleagues asked 103 volunteers to complete a series of math problems. Unbeknownst

to the participants, there was a quick shortcut to solve all of them. Sixteen of the volunteers

figured that out, and were excluded from the rest of the study. The volunteers who didn't

determine the secret were asked to emulate Dali's method, but pinching a plastic bottle

with their fingertips, rather than a key. Some took a Dali style micro-napped, some

mapped longer, and others didn't map at all. After the snooze, the researchers asked

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