Washington, Feb 22 (Inditop.com) If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don’t snigger. New research from the University of California, Berkeley (UC-B) shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore brain power.
The findings suggest that a biphasic sleep (sleeping twice in a 24-hour period) schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.
Conversely, the more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become, says the study.
The results support previous data from the same research team that staying awake overnight, a common college practice during midterms and finals, decreases the ability to cram in new facts by nearly 40 percent.
“Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness but, at a neuro-cognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap,” said Matthew Walker, assistant professor of psychology at UC-B and lead study investigator.
In the recent UC-B sleep study, 39 healthy young adults were divided into two groups – nap and no-nap.
At noon, all the participants were subjected to a rigorous learning task intended to tax the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helps store fact-based memories. Both groups performed at comparable levels.
At 2 p.m., the nap group took a 90-minute siesta while the no-nap group stayed awake. Later that day, at 6 p.m., participants performed a new round of learning exercises, said an UC-B release.
Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. Conversely, those who napped did markedly better and actually improved in their capacity to learn.
These findings were presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego, California.
