Creative people may face more trouble sleeping: Study

In the study, the researchers sought to understand how two types of creativity -- visual and verbal -- influence objective aspects of sleep such as duration and timing and subjective aspects -- sleep quality.

The findings showed that both have different sleep patterns. Visual creativity is activated by different cerebral mechanisms than verbal creativity.

"Visually creative people reported disturbed sleep leading to difficulties in daytime functioning," whereas, "in the case of verbally creative people, the study found that they sleep more hours, go to sleep late and get up later," Neta Ram-Vlasov, doctoral student at University of Haifa in Israel, said in a statement.

"This strengthens the hypothesis that the processing and expression of visual creativity involves different psychobiological mechanisms to those found in verbal creativity," Ram-Vlasov added.

One possible explanations for the differences can be the that a 'surplus' of visual creativity makes the individual more alert which could lead to sleep disturbances.

"On the other hand, it is possible that it is protracted sleep among verbally creativity individuals facilitating processes that support the creative process while they are awake," Ram-Vlasov said.