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Foto - The Hindu

It seems like something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, but it turns out taking naps can improve your life in more ways than previously thought. A new study has found that young adults who slept for 90 minutes after lunch increased their learning.  Their memories were more able to absorb new facts.

The discoveries were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Diego.

“You need to sleep before learning, to prepare your brain, like a dry sponge, to absorb new information,” said Matthew P. Walker, lead investigator and assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley.

The study used 39 young adults and divided them into two groups. All were asked to remember 100 names and faces at noon, and then to remember a different set of names and faces at 6 p.m.  The 20 volunteers who slept for 90 minutes between the two learning sessions improved their scores by an average of 10 percent, while the scores of those who didn’t nap actually dropped by 10 percent.

Let’s all hope that colleges and universities will bring back nap time (juice and animal crackers too).

Reference |

New York Times Article