View Single Post
Old 07-27-2003, 07:17 PM   #1 (permalink)
Mephisto2
Junkie
 
1 hour "Power Nap" as good as a night's sleep

Courtesy of the BBC.


Grabbing an hour's sleep during the day may be as beneficial as a whole night in bed, according to scientists.

But the "power-nap" only works if the sleep is of the right quality, say the experts from Harvard University, US.

And experts say that a full night's sleep is still necessary for many vital body functions, even though a short sleep may boost learning and memory.

Many famous people have claimed that it is possible to get by on just a few hours' sleep a night.

Yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur sailed solo around the world while sleeping only occasionally and for very short periods.

However, there are plenty of others who say they cannot function properly without the full eight hours.

We should not conclude that we can do with just a nap.

Dr Derk-jan Dijk, University of Surrey
The Harvard research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, compared the learning and memory skills of two groups of people during a single day, and again the following morning.

One group was told not to sleep at all during the day, and, as expected, their performance tailed off into the afternoon and evening.

However, the other volunteers were allowed to have an hour or 90 minutes nap at 2pm.

The researchers tested the brainwaves of the "nappers" to check the quality of their sleep.

Dream state

They were looking for two different sleep phases - slow wave sleep, and rapid eye movement, which is normally associated with dreaming.

Those whose sleep involved both phases fared significantly better than those who had no sleep when given the learning test later in the day.

Volunteers who never reached rapid eye movement sleep did not perform as well - although even this "poor-quality" sleep did prevent some of the deterioration in performance.

Remarkably, over 24 hours, the performance of those who took a good-quality "power-nap" was as good as volunteers in previous studies who were tested after two full nights' sleep.

The researchers wrote: "From the perspective of behavioural improvement, a nap is as good as a night of sleep for learning on this perceptual task."

Dr Derk-jan Dijk, from the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey, said that there was increasing evidence that a combination of "short wave sleep" and REM sleep was important for learning and memory.

However, he added: "We should not conclude that we can do with just a nap.

"Sleep is useful for more things than just these particular tests.

"Other research has suggested that people given six hours of sleep a night over a sustained period find it extremely detrimental."
Mephisto2 is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360