Youāve got a spare hour before a big exam. How should you spend it? It seems napping is just as effective as revising, and could even have a longer-lasting impact.
Repeatedly revising information to learn it makes sense. āAny kind of reactivation of a memory trace will lead to it being strengthened and reconsolidated,ā says at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. āWith any memory, the more you recall it, the stronger the memory trace.ā
However, sleep is also thought to be vital for memory. A good nightās sleep seems to help our brains consolidate what weāve learned in the day, and learning anything when youāre not well rested is tricky. Many people swear by a quick afternoon kip.
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So if youāve got an hour free, is it better to nap or revise? Cousins, along with Michael Chee and their colleagues, also at Duke-NUS Medical School, set out to compare the two options. The team mocked-up a real student experience, and had 72 volunteers sit through presentations of about 12 different species of ants and crabs. The participants were asked to learn all about these animals, including their diets and habitats, for example.
After 80 minutes of this, the students were given an hour to either watch a film, have a nap, or revise what they had just learned. After this hour, they had another 80 minutes of learning. Then they had to sit an exam in which they were asked 360 questions about the ants and the crabs.
Long-term benefits
āThe napping group got the best scores,ā says Cousins, whose work was presented at annual meeting in San Diego, California on Tuesday.
Cousins and his colleagues called the volunteers back for another test a week later. The nappers scored the highest in this test, too. And while the crammers significantly outperformed the movie-viewers on the first test, they lost their edge in the second test ā there was no significant difference in the two groupsā scores a week later.
āIt could indicate that cramming information might be good in the short term, but in the long run, the benefits might not be that great,ā says Cousins.
However, Cousins is holding back on drawing definitive conclusions from his work ā while the nappers were significantly better than film watchers, and crammers and film-watchers were statistically as bad as each other, the difference between the nappers and crammers did not come out as statistically significant. So until the team has conducted bigger studies, the evidenceĀ suggests napping is at least as effective as cramming, and might be better.
Napping in the lab
Cousinsās team isnāt sure why napping might be so beneficial. Itās possible that some memories are laid down in the brain during a short sleep, or more likely, a refreshing rest can leave you better able to learn. āIt could be that what the nap is doing is making them more alert,ā says at the University of York in the UK. āItās an interesting question, but we need more research,ā he says.
Either way, the team are embracing afternoon napping. āThereās a natural dip in alertness at around 3 pm,ā says Cousins. āI would say take a nap then. We do it in our lab.ā Some members have futons in their offices, he says, while others nod off at their desks. āNapping is encouraged.ā
And Cousins has some advice for students: āDonāt stress yourself out just cramming some information into your head,ā he says. āTaking a nap is just as good.ā
Read more: How much sleep do you really need?
