Stop cramming and start napping

Students everywhere may long ago have made their own assumptions about the relationship between sleep and memory, especially after they drew a complete blank on that last test after pulling an all-nighter. Had they taken a few short naps, perhaps they would remembered the material from their cram sessions a little better, or so new study results from German researchers would suggest.

Study participants were shown a list of 30 words and asked to recall it after a 60-minute interval that was either spent sleeping or performing an activity. Both long (50 minutes) and short naps (6 minutes) enhanced memory performance, although longer naps were slightly more beneficial. But either way students who slept, even briefly, had better memory performance than their counterparts who had engaged in activity. The researchers suggest that onset of sleep may initiate processes to consolidate memory, which remain effective even if the subject awakes shortly afterward.

You can learn more about this relationship at the National Sleep Foundation's conference - The Role of Sleep & Memory in Learning. Experts in neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience, and sleep medicine will meet up next Monday and Tuesday (March 3-4) in Washington DC to shed some more light on the matter. There are a few breaks built into the agenda which would offer the perfect opportunity to take a quick catnap to soak in all of lectures.