A 90-minute nap would stimulate motor skills and memory.
- These results make it possible to imagine rehabilitation therapies for patients with stroke and other neurological disorders.
- It could also relate to motor learning, such as kinesiology and physiology.
If you’re a nap-lover, you’re right. Taking a nap in the afternoon is beneficial for our health and for our cognitive abilities. But how long should the nap last to be effective? American researchers from the Northwestern University suggest that 90 minutes is needed to stimulate both motor skills and memory. They presented the results of their work on October 18 in The Journal of Neuroscience.
The nap optimizes motor skills
Sleep improves a person’s ability to learn difficult motor tasks because it helps the brain process and focus on the new skill. A short sleep allows to optimize this motricity and would allow to function more quickly and more efficiently.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers asked the participants to perform a difficult motor task with and without sleep. It involved playing a computer game in which you had to move a cursor using specific arm muscles. After practicing, the participants played the game blindfolded and moved the cursor based only on the matching sounds.
Improve patient rehabilitation
The results showed that those who took a 90-minute nap performed the movements better than those who didn’t. These results make it possible to imagine rehabilitation therapies for patients with stroke and other neurological disorders, according to the researchers. “We used targeted memory reactivation, whereby a stimulus that has been associated with learning is presented again during sleep, to induce a recapitulation of awake brain activity.”, says Larry Cheng, lead author of the study.
The researchers believe that reactivation may be relevant for neurorehabilitation and areas concerned with motor learning, such as kinesiology and physiology. “Current results support the conclusion that execution-based motor components can be reactivated during sleep, which improves performance after waking.adds Larry Cheng. By extension, activation of motor control networks during sleep may be integral to the mechanism of motor skill consolidation..”
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