Benefits of Sleeping On The Job

It seems the Spanish may have been onto something all along. Researchers at City College of New York sleep lab have found that a 45 minute daytime nap can help a person remember facts.

The brain files newly acquired memories into two main compartments. Those relating to skills go into our 'procedural memory' compartment, while those concerning facts-such as the stuff we learn from books, ducumentaries and from interacting with other people-end up in our declarative memories.

The experiment led by Dr. Matthew Tucker, a Harvard Medical School fellow, tested 33 people on their declarative memory capabilities to remember unrelated word pairs, mazes and complexe line drawings.

The volunteers who took a 45 minute nap at the start of the three hour break between memorising and testing performed much betterthan those who stayed in the lab and watched TV.