Sunday, February 03, 2008
The period of non-REM sleep essentially consists of the other four sleep stages and lasts between 90 and 120 minutes, while each individual stage lasts anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes in length.
A recent study by Matthew A. Tucker, PhD, of the Center for Sleep and cognition and the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has discovered that a short 45 minute non-REM nap during the afternoon can have important benefits for an individual’s declarative memory performance.
Declarative memory consists of accessible conscious memory, such as semantic memory which refers to factual knowledge and episodic memory which refers to theoretical knowledge.
The study demonstrated that compared to those with equivalent periods of wakefulness, a nap facilitated declarative memory performance for all who mastered the memory tasks during training.
"These results suggest that there is a threshold acquisition level that has to be obtained for sleep to optimally process the memory," said Dr. Tucker. The study suggests that a nap can help one to retain well-learned material.
Ironically, the study made no suggestions regarding sleep habits facilitating the acquiring of new information.
© www.mentalhealthblog.com
Declarative Memory, Memory Task, Non-REM Sleep, Semantic Memory, Sleep Stages, Threshold
4 comments
4 comments:
The employer should react to the results of this studio. There should be sleeping facilities wherever you perform a creative job.
We might even be better off to take some advice from Greece. Their work days are longer in order to make up for their long afternoon siestas when everything shuts down.
Its interesting to hear the results of this study about naps and boosting learning power. I have heard other people say that naps lead people feel groggy. Whatever works for you may not be consistent with the latest study.
I totally agree. I am not the type of person to take naps. I have been told, however, that the reason I can't nap is because I'm not allowing the exact amount of time needed to gain any benefit from it. You're supposed to stay within that 90 minute non-REM range. It seems difficult to do though.
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