In a research that was recently conducted, short power naps are proven to boost one’s memory performance by up to five times.

A nap that is between 45-60 minutes in the middle of the days is proven to produce improvement in a person’s memory retrieval, (as per Neuropsychology’s published study).

It was said that a person is more likely to improve their learning skills and capacity if they take a short nap. Whether it be at the office or school, it will help them with their memory performance, therefore leading to a more probability of success in what they do.

Axel Mechlinger, professor and study supervisor of Saarland University in Germany stated that, “Wherever people are in a learning environment, we should think seriously about the positive effects of sleep.”

In the study they have conducted. They have divided their subjects into two groups particularly, control group and nap group. They made the 2 groups watch DVDs and the control group’s performance were notably poorer that those of the nap group. The nap group were said to have no trouble remembering word pairs such as milk-taxi.
“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. We suspect that certain types of memory content, particularly information that was previously tagged, is preferentially consolidated during this type of brain activity,” added Mecklinger.

The researchers focused their study on a particular part of the brain which ‘consolidates’ memories – medically known as the Hippocampus. This is where information that the brain has previously gathered are being stored in long-tem memory.

Head researcher Sara Studte stated that they have examined a particular type of brain activity, known as ‘sleep spindles’ which plays an important role in memory consolidation during sleep.
A sleep spindle is a short burst of rapid oscillations in the electroencephalogram (EEG). If a person has a strong memory, then it is more likely because they have a greater number of sleep spindles appearing in their EEG.

If aiming for an enhanced information recall and long-term memory, then a short nap a day is not to be neglected, the study proves.

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