In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration

by Shane O'Mara

What we see here, as we do throughout this book, is that walking brings us to a place of clearer thinking. We can think of ourselves as being able to walk away from a problem by getting to a place where a solution is possible. It is a peculiar and wonderful creative problem-solving state comparable in many ways to that which can arise on the edge of dreaming, and even during dreaming itself. The phrase ‘sleep on it’ is an everyday testament to sleep’s generative and creative powers, and writers through the ages have attested to sleep’s great problem-solving properties. John Steinbeck wrote that ‘It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.’25 Scientists have found the same: one famous example is August Kekulé having a dream of a snake eating its own tail, and realising that the molecular structure of benzene must be a ring-shaped.26 Beyond anecdote, though, experimental studies support this connection. In one study participants were given a difficult cognitive task requiring the learning of stimulus-response sequences. Hidden within the task was a shortcut – an abstract rule that allowed quick solutions. Exposure to the problem followed by eight hours of sleep more than doubled the probability that participants would solve the task, underlining how emphatically sleep provides time for offline problem-solving and memory consolidation.