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Napping may assist in the learning process

Taking a nap may relieve burnout and assist with the learning process, according to a July 2, 2002, news release from the National Institute of Mental Health. Researchers from Harvard University, Boston, found that study participants' scores on performance of a visual task worsened over the course of four daily practice sessions. When participants took a 30-minute nap after the second practice session, their performance did not continue to deteriorate, and after a one-hour nap, their performance returned to the level of the first practice session. Researchers propose that the brain's visual cortex becomes saturated with information through repeated testing and that burnout (ie, irritation, frustration, poor performance) may be the brain's mechanism for preserving information that has not yet been consolidated into memory by sleep.

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Monitoring of participants' brain and ocular electrical activity while napping revealed that participants who took one-hour naps experienced more than four times the amount of deep, slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep than those who took 30-minute naps. Participants spent more time in slow wave sleep on the day of the practice sessions than they had on a baseline day when no practice sessions took place. Researchers suggest that slow wave sleep functions as the initial processing stage of experience-dependent, long-term learning and the critical stage for restoring perceptual performance; therefore, slow wave sleep experienced during napping may act as an antidote to burnout.

"Power Nap" Prevents Burnout; Morning Sleep Perfects a Skill (news release, Bethesda, Md: National Institute of Mental Health, July 2, 2002) http://www.nimh.nih.gov/ events/sleep.cfm (accessed 16 Aug 2002).

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Napping may assist in the learning process

AORN Journal, Dec, 2002

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