According to an article in Mental Floss, “An hour’s nap in the afternoon can boost a person’s brain power and improve their memory … showing that short periods of sleep during the day can make it easier to function mentally.”
It all happens in the hippocampus, which is a part of our brain which temporarily stores “fact-based memories.” “It’s as though the email inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact emails, you’re not going to receive any more mail. It’s just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder,” Dr Matthew Walker, a Berkeley psychologist said.
Even more fascinating, the study found that small children who are learning to construct words into sentences are unlikely to remember their lessons unless they sleep soon afterward.
Photo by dailygalaxy.