Take a nap if you want to be smarter

If the brain is considered a mailbox, then a daytime nap helps us clean that mailbox.

Photo: National Geographic .

That was the statement of Matthew Walker - a scientist at the University of California, USA - at the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of American Science, in the city of San Diego on February 22.

Sleep studies over the past decades have shown that eye-closing helps people increase their ability to remember and strengthen memories. Since then many people believe that a deep night's sleep is conducive to learning more than naps during the day.

Today scientists have found the reason why sleep makes us absorb information more easily. When people are awake, information is "locked up" in short-term memories of the hippocampus in the brain. While we sleep, information moves into long-term memories in the cortex. This phenomenon not only helps the brain process new information, but also releases "storage" for the brain to receive new information.

"That means we not only need to sleep after studying, but sleep before school is also necessary. Sleep helps the brain reach a dry gauze-like state to get information ready , " National Geographic said. from Walker.

To prove this statement, Walker and colleagues invited 39 adults to take part in a trial. They are divided into two groups. One group slept about 90 minutes before taking the test, and the other did not sleep. Experts then asked both groups to absorb new information and synthesize what they remembered.

The researchers found that the sleepless group remembered less information than the sleeping group. The results of the monitoring of volunteer brain activity showed that the hippocampus of the sleeping group was "cleaned up" in the second stage - called the non-rapid eye phase of sleep.

The new findings reinforce the hypothesis of the benefits of naps during the day. However, not all people acquire knowledge more quickly and effectively after daytime naps. That's the statement of Sara Mednick, a University of California psychiatrist. Some individuals tend to be groggy and disoriented after a nap due to "inertia" syndrome.

"The typical manifestation of inertial sleep syndrome is that we always wake up while we are fast asleep. Because the temperature in the brain and the blood flow to the brain are reduced during the deep sleep period, the fact that we wake up halfway makes the brain In that case, we should take a break before acquiring knowledge , " Mednick said.