According to the US National Library of Medicine, daytime naps lasting between 6 and 120 minutes can help reduce the forgetting of episodic memories and lead to qualitative changes in them.
This transformation of memories is determined by active processes, including autonomous memory reactivation.
Sleep may refresh memory networks, which would facilitate the encoding of new episodic memories.
The study participants, who were recruited from students at the National University of Singapore, were woken up only after stage 1 or 2 sleep, according to the article “The long-term memory benefit of a daytime nap compared with cramming*,” published on the National Library of Medicine portal.
They were not allowed to sleep beyond 16:00 to reduce the potential impact of sleep on daytime learning blocks.
Overall, the combination of sleep with spontaneous awakenings resulted in a range of total sleep duration of approximately 60 min.
Benefits of Daytime Napping
Sleeping for 1 hour provides comparable learning gains when compared to an equivalent amount of time spent cramming.
Testing 30 minutes after learning showed that retention of factual knowledge was significantly better after an hour spent sleeping than after cramming without a break.
The benefits of napping persisted after one week, while cramming did not significantly improve knowledge retention compared to taking a break.
* Study authors: James N Cousins, Kian F Wong, Bindiya L Raghunath, Carol Look, Michael WL Chee.
