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Jewish World Review
http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) Life is falling into place for Sara Mednick. She recently earned a doctorate in psychology from Harvard University and landed a research position at the esteemed Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif. One problem, though. She still hasn't found a place for her office couch. No, not the one featured in stereotypical scenes of the psychotherapist. Mednick uses her office couch for daily napping. "I love taking naps," Mednick said. "I did it all of the time at Harvard." Mednick knows what you likely are thinking: that taking naps is a lazy person's habit. Or that napping is a luxury reserved for academic types, professional athletes and freelance writers, among others with flexible schedules. Or maybe that you can't accomplish anything or learn anything if you are napping. Mednick and colleagues such as Matthew Walker of Harvard are aiming to change those perceptions about the realities of napping. For instance, they are finding in research trials that catching a nap might just be the best strategy for learning new motor and visual skills such as playing a musical instrument, hitting a golf ball straight or spotting birds in the woods.
It turns out a 30- to 60-minute nap can improve motor-skill development by allowing the brain to process and store the newly learned information while the body is resting. The hypothesis is that your brain reaches a saturation point of neural connections when learning a new skill. This overload adversely affects the brain's performance as the day unfolds, rather than causing it to falter because of general body fatigue. "The time of day is critical for napping," Mednick said. "Two to 3 p.m. is ideal." Mednick's newest study, published in this month's issue of Nature Neuroscience, builds on past research showing that daily naps_labeled "power naps" in the popular media_improve alertness, mood, productivity and capability of learning new things. This paper shows that napping helps with previously learned skills or facts. Three groups were tested for perceptual skills, such as distinguishing a target from other distracting images on a computer screen. One group did no napping, the second group napped for 30 minutes and a third rested for a full hour. All groups were baseline-tested in the morning after learning the new skill, then again 12 hours later. The non-nappers scored lowest, but, interestingly, improved their own scores by nearly 20 percent when tested again the following morning after a restful night's sleep. The 60-minute group performed better than the 30-minute nappers, though both were significantly superior to the no-nap control group at all testing points. Mednick and her fellow authors reasoned that a longer nap affords both rapid-eye movement (REM) and slow-wave sleep cycles. You have probably read or heard about REM sleep and know the deeper form of sleep is important to health. The new Harvard research points to the potential importance of slow-wave sleep. This slow-wave sleep might just explain why some people seem to learn motor skills more easily than others. On a practical level, many athletes, dancers and other performers report feeling more competent after a night or two of good rest even if they did not practice or rehearse. "This is the part of a good night's sleep that many people will cut short by getting up early in the morning," Walker said. Of course, keep in mind that getting up early is relative. If you go to bed earlier the previous night, then awakening at, say, 5:30 or 6 a.m., is not as likely to pilfer the slow-wave sleep as it will for the night owl. Most researchers agree that 7.5 to 8 hours is an ideal amount of nightly sleep for the typical adult, and the final two hours are predominantly the slow-wave sleep. Napping in midafternoon aligns with biological studies showing the body reaches a low ebb about halfway through the waking hours of your day. What's more, it creates the highest potential for both REM and slow-wave sleep. Mednick said we all know what nap length is enough for an individual energy boost. Getting past 30 minutes is vital for optimal learning capacity, according to results from these early studies, while logging more than 60 to 90 minutes tends to make people feel groggy from too much REM sleep during the day. Napping might sound as inviting as that summertime hammock, but many workers face a common obstacle. "Businesses still resist any sort of napping for employees," Mednick said. "Maybe the solution is a half-hour lunch and half-hour naptime," perhaps two hours after lunch. "People are already taking naps at work. They just don't admit it. But they insist they are tons more effective because of the naps."
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