Afternoon nap may help long-term memory

A 90-minute daytime nap helps speed up the process of retaining our long-term memories, a recent Israeli study finds.

“The results of this research suggests that it is possible to speed up memory consolidation, and in the future, we may be able to do it artificially,” said Professor Avi Karni of the Center for Brain and Behavior Research at the University of Haifa in Israel.

This new research, published in the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience, revealed that a daytime nap changes the course of consolidating these memories in the brain. However, it offered no reasons for the memory enhancement.

Two groups of participants in the study practiced a repeated motor activity, which consisted of bringing the thumb and a finger together at a specific sequence. The research examined the “how” aspect of memory in the participants’ ability to perform the task quickly and in the correct sequence. One of the groups was allowed to nap for an hour and a half after learning the task while the other group stayed awake.

The group that slept in the afternoon showed a distinct improvement in their task performance by that evening, as opposed to the group that stayed awake, which did not exhibit any improvement. Following an entire night’s sleep, both groups exhibited the same skill level.

“This part of the research showed that a daytime nap speeds up performance improvement in the brain. After a night’s sleep the two groups were at the same level, but the group that slept in the afternoon improved much faster than the group that stayed awake,” said Professor Karni.