themedicalstate:How Napping Significantly Boosts Brain HealthYour brain needs time to consolidate yo

themedicalstate:How Napping Significantly Boosts Brain HealthYour brain needs time to consolidate your memory, and it does so as you sleep.According to a survey from the Pew Research Center, an estimated one-third of the adult American population nap on a typical day.As useless as napping may seem, it turns out those who do nap may experience better learning and memory recall when compared to those who don’t.Research done over the past few years shows that sleep before and post-learning is beneficial for human memory performance. In fact, napping has more benefits on your memory and cognition than you might think.A recent study looking at the impact of sleeping on memory has suggested that short 100-minute naps may restore learning ability and memory recall. The researchers recruited 44 participants who were tasked with memorizing 100 names and faces and were later tested on their ability to recall the information.After, half of the participants were allowed to take a 100-minute nap, while the rest stayed awake and resumed their daily activities.Both groups —the no-nap and nap groups— were tested again on their memory at the end of the day by memorizing another 100 names and faces.The scientists found that the participants who didn’t nap performed 12% worse on their second memory test, showing that their learning ability naturally degraded as the day went on.However, those in the napping group experienced a memory boost instead. Participants performed on average 10% better on their second test than the no-napping groups and control groups.The reason for such a drastic increase in memory performance was due to the stage of sleep the participants in the napping group entered. The researchers observed a positive correlation between stage-2 NREM sleep and the nap group’s learning ability.There are two main phases of sleep: REM (rapid eye movement) and NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep. NREM sleep is the first phase of sleep that consists of 3 different stages. The first stage is the transition period between wakefulness and sleep. The second stage is a period of light sleep, followed by deep sleep in the third stage.During stage-2 NREM sleep, our brain produces short, synchronized bursts of electrical activity known as sleep spindles. These sleep spindles are suspected to be “replaying” memories by reactivating the patterns of neural activity that occur during a previous experience.Research has shown that the replay process occurs in the hippocampus, a region where working/short-term memory is stored, before propagating to the prefrontal cortex, where long-term memories are stored. Depending on the duration of the memory, they are replayed across single or multiple sleep spindles.This process is what likely drives memory consolidation and is what enabled the participants in the nap group to perform better on their second test. During the replay process, neurons fire in the same sequence as they did when the initial memory was created, which strengthens the synapses and connections between neurons.The authors of the previous study also noticed that sleep spindles increased the dependence of previous memories on the cortical region of the brain while decreasing hippocampal dependence. This has been demonstrated to be the key process that occurs during memory consolidation, where memories in the prefrontal cortex get stronger while memories in the hippocampus become weaker.The scientists also found that people in the nap group who experienced more spindles in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain had a higher learning capacity after their nap. These participants likely experienced better memory consolidation during their naps.A study conducted in China has also found significant differences between cognitive function between elderly who took afternoon naps and those who didn’t. Naps were also divided into 3 groups: short naps (<30 minutes), moderate naps (30–90 minutes), and extended naps (>90 minutes).They found that elderly participants who took naps of moderate length had better cognition than those who didn’t take naps, those who took short naps, as well as those who took extended naps.This study brings forth the question of best napping practices: when, and for how long should we take naps?The time and duration of naps vary from person to person; different people have different sleeping cycles and need different amounts of sleep. However, naps generally shouldn’t exceed 90 minutes as longer naps can cause grogginess and impact sleep at night.“Ideally, the nap should last between 20 and 40 minutes to avoid feeling groggy immediately after you wake up,” says Charlene Gamaldo, M.D., medical director of Johns Hopkins Sleep Disorders Center.By Andrew Lian (Medium). Photo by Kate Stone Matheson on Unsplash. -- source link

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