Having a nap in the afternoon can help your brain function – particularly for remembering things. I do enjoy a good nap every so often and now I think’ll make a habit of it.
Researchers in the U.S. studied 39 young adults who were divided into two groups. At noon, study participants took a memory test that required them to remember faces linked to names.
Of those in the study, 20 took a nap for 100 minutes. All of the volunteers were then retested at 6 p.m.
Those who stayed awake did about 10 per cent worse on the tests compared with those who napped, Matthew Walker of University of California at Berkeley said. He presented the preliminary findings Sunday at the American Association of the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego.
The more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish the brain becomes, the study suggests.
Normally, the ability to learn declines between noon and 6 p.m., but a nap seemed to fight off the decline.