If you do one thing this week . . . have a nap to remember
Do you need to remember something? Then have a nap and dream about it, new research suggests.
The Harvard study asked participants to learn the layout of a three-dimensional virtual maze and then undergo a retest five hours later.
Individuals who napped between the initial learning and the retest did better when they returned to the task, adding weight to previous studies that link sleep with memory consolidation.
But there was another layer to doing well: when they quizzed the people who had snoozed between tests they found those who had dreamed about the task had done better at it on waking.
Be warned though, you can’t cheat by avoiding the shut eye and just daydreaming about the task – it seems the dreams have to take place while you are in a particular sleep state, according to the authors of the study in the journal Current Biology.
Now there’s something to sleep on.
– CLAIRE O’CONNELL
