Do you usually have trouble focusing on something or being productive in the afternoon? Is keeping your eyes open when you are sitting and relaxed a very difficult task? When you are going through this situation, know that you are in need of a nap.
Taking a nap has many health benefits, balances hormones and rests the heart.
It can also improve your quality of life and help you feel fit. In addition, napping recharges your mind and ensures that your memory retains more information.
Professor Jim Home of Loughborough University says “in fact, most humans should sleep at least twice a day; once quick in the afternoon and once long in the evening.”
An article in The New York Times states that naps are a habit in several countries around the world:
“The idea that we should sleep in eight-hour blocks is relatively recent. The world's population sleeps in many different ways. Millions of Chinese workers continue to put their heads on top of their desks for an hour-long nap after lunch, for example, and during the day napping is very common in the region from India to Spain.”
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Taking a nap improves the natural functioning of the brain
Sleeping is a lot like spring cleaning, as it helps us get rid of our short-term memories that we no longer need, leaving more empty spaces for new information to come in.
A survey of the study led by Dr. Matthew Walker, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, has proposed that napping for at least a few hours can refresh the mind, restore brain strength and even increase your intelligence. “Sleep not only corrects the damage of the wakefulness state, but on a neurocognitive level, you end up moving beyond where you were when you took your nap.”
The study
The study was done with 39 healthy young adults. There were two groups, the first was the napping group and the second was the non-napping group. Both groups were tasked with performing activities that required understanding complex information and retaining memory. This activity was administered at noon. Two hours later, the napping group was allowed to take an hour-and-a-half nap. Participants who did not nap, of course, remained awake. Both groups were given other memory and learning activities at 18 pm.
The results
The group that napped in the afternoon not only performed better on the 18 pm activity, but also ended up doing better on the task they did at noon, before they took their naps.
Walker summarized that the group was better able to clear and rest their minds during nap, enabling them to capture and retain more information.
the hippocampus
One of the many purposes of the hippocampus is to temporarily store fact-based memories. The hippocampus then transfers the memories to the prefrontal cortex of the brain.
According to Walker, the hippocampus works a lot like an email or text message, when it gets full you need to get some sleep to clear your mind a little. If you don't clear your mailbox, it will become full and you won't be able to store any more emails or information.
“It will just delete them when you sleep and move them to another folder,” says Walker.
The nap and creativity
According to research that was recently presented at an annual meeting of renowned neuroscientists, during sleep, the right side of the brain is stimulated and activated, while the left side remains quiet and rested.
To arrive at this result, researchers monitored the brain activity of fifteen volunteers individually while they rested. The right side of the brain is the area usually associated with creativity.
Author of the studies, Dr. Andrei Medvedev, Ph.D, assistant professor at Georgetown University's Center for Molecular and Functional Imaging, says: the right side of the brain was more integrated.
It is believed that the right side of the brain deals more directly with things related to creativity and artistic activities. The left side, however, is used more in tasks where we have to deal more with numbers, languages ​​and analytical thinking. Medvedev claims that the right side of the brain is responsible for “cleaning up” and consolidating or pruning memories during a nap.
Conclusion
We have discussed the many positive and beneficial effects that napping can bring. It can increase brain capacity and improve memory by clearing unnecessary memories and making room to receive new information. So the next time you want to lie down and take a nap in the afternoon, know that your body and your brain will thank you!
Text written by Amanda Magliaro from the Eu Sem Fronteiras Team.
