1. As we snooze, our brain is busily processing the information we have learned during the day.
2. Sleep makes memories stronger, and it even appears to weed out irrelevant details and background information so that only the important pieces remain.
3. Our brain also works during slumber to find hidden relations among memories and to solve problems we were working on while awake.
4. If you want to problem-solve in a dream, you should first of all think of the problem before bed, and if it lends itself to an image, hold it in your mind and let it be the last thing in your mind before falling asleep.

   If it's a personal problem, it might be the person you have the conflict with. If you're an artist, it might be a blank canvas. If you're a scientist, the device you're working on that's half assembled or a mathematical proof you've been writing through versions of.

   Equally important, don't jump out of bed when you wake up—almost half of dream content is lost if you get distracted. Lie there, don't do anything else.

A lucid dream, in simplest terms, is a dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming.

To improve your chances of having a lucid dream:

• remind yourself you want to just as you're falling asleep
• get enough sleep

For more see How Can You Control Your Dreams?, Lucid dream, and Sleep on It: How Snoozing Makes You Smarter