Napping Boosts Learning Ability, Study Says

Napping Boosts Learning Ability, Study Says
The scientists found that bursts of brain activity called 'sleep spindles' could serve to restore efficient learning ability in key regions of the brain. (Photos.com)
3/8/2011
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/89680889.jpg" alt="The scientists found that bursts of brain activity called 'sleep spindles' could serve to restore efficient learning ability in key regions of the brain. (Photos.com)" title="The scientists found that bursts of brain activity called 'sleep spindles' could serve to restore efficient learning ability in key regions of the brain. (Photos.com)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1801990"/></a>
The scientists found that bursts of brain activity called 'sleep spindles' could serve to restore efficient learning ability in key regions of the brain. (Photos.com)
Taking a nap could be a proactive way of enhancing learning capacity, according to research by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), published in Current Biology on March 8.

The scientists found that bursts of brain activity called “sleep spindles” could serve to restore efficient learning ability in key regions of the brain. These rapid electrical oscillations occur during stage 2 of non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep, up to 1,000 times per night, before entering deep NREM sleep and dreaming or REM sleep.

“All these pieces of the puzzle tell a consistent and compelling story—that sleep spindles predict learning refreshment,” said senior author Matthew Walker, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley, in a press release.

The team looked at 44 young, healthy adults and put them through a memorizing task aimed at tiring the hippocampus of the brain. The group was then split with half allowed to take a nap and the others not allowed to take a nap.

All participants performed a second learning task in the evening revealing that the subjects who had taken a nap had better memorizing abilities than those who had stayed awake.

Using electroencephalogram tests, the researchers discovered that learning ability increased with the number of sleep spindles generated during napping, and observed that the spindles travel between the brain regions where the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are located, both of which are vital in memory.

“A lot of that spindle-rich sleep is occurring the second half of the night, so if you sleep six hours or less, you are shortchanging yourself. You will have fewer spindles, and you might not be able to learn as much,” said lead author Bryce Mander, a post-doctoral fellow in psychology at UC Berkeley.

“Our findings demonstrate that sleep may selectively seek out and operate on our memory systems to restore their critical functions,” Walker said.

“This discovery indicates that we not only need sleep after learning to consolidate what we’ve memorized, but that we also need it before learning, so that we can recharge and soak up new information the next day.”

Read the study here.

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