As many college students already know, naps are beneficial to help live a healthy life style, but did you know it can help improve your memory as well?
A new study done by German graduate students Sara Studte, Emma Brider and PhD supervisor Alex Mecklinger from Saarland University showed that people who were allowed to nap for 90 minutes had better scores on a memory test than those who watched movies for 90 minutes.
The study consisted of two groups. Participants learned single words and word pairs before taking a baseline test to compare their results. One group was allowed to subsequently nap for 90 minutes while the other was allowed to watch DVDs. Afterwards both groups retook the same test to see which group retained the information.
Professor Mecklinger said in a press release, “The control group, whose members watched DVDs while the other group slept, performed significantly worse than the nap group when it came to remembering the word pairs. The memory performance of the participants who had a power nap was just as good as it was before sleeping, that is, immediately after completing the learning phase.”
The study showed that those who napped retained more of the information and scored higher on the test than those who watched movies. The reason for this was because your hippocampus, the part of your brain that help to maintain memories, receives a boost while you are sleeping.
The next time you feel like you have to pull an all-nighter to study, remember that just a few hours of sleep can be more beneficial than staying up all night cramming for that big test.
