A new study explains a possible reason why sometimes taking a nap break helps people perform better when they resume a task — during sleep, short-term information related to the task at hand is converted into long-term, stronger memory, researchers found.
The team, led by researchers from Harvard Medical School, US, monitored brain activity of 25 participants as they were learning a typing sequence, followed by taking a nap.
During sleep, areas in the cortex — brain`s outermost layer that helps with higher-level functions such as memory — that were active while the participants worked showed more rhythmic, repetitive patterns, indicating that information related to the task is being processed, the team found.
The results, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, also show that an increased number of brain waves in these areas of the brain`s cortex were related with an improved performance of the participants following the nap.
“During sleep, cortical brain areas active during training had more rhythmic activity. Increased brain rhythms in these areas correlated with how much participants improved in the task after the nap,” the authors wrote.
Further, the researchers found that performance during learning was linked with an increased activity during sleep in brain regions known to help with executing a movement — possibly representing the memory of the task.
However, performance after a nap was linked to an increased activity during sleep in brain regions known to help with planning a movement, which the authors suggested may help improve functioning in future.
“Brain rhythms occur everywhere in the brain during sleep. But the rhythms in these regions increase after learning, presumably to stabilise and enhance memory,” author Dana Manoach, professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, said.
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