Question: What have you found out about how sleep affects our problem solving ability?

John J Shaw answered on 16 Jun 2021:

In the field we’ve found that overall sleep can help our problem solving but it depends on the type of problem, with the harder the problem the more sleep benefits/aids problem solving.

The reason for this is we problem solve by making connections between concepts and the easier ones can be solved by our unconscious processes that just go on in the day (If you ever randomly remember the name of a song or something similar, that’s an example of this). When we go to sleep because we don’t have to dedicate cognitive resources to anything needed during wake (e.g., vision) we can intensively work on these problems.

Personally I’m looking at how we can use this in mathematics, if learning about a concept or attempting a problem just before bed can be benefitted by sleep. So far the research is promising but it still needs some further work.