i was reading this article..
Nap without guilt: It boosts sophisticated memory
it talks about how napping helps the brain memory, and experiments on people to confirm their theory.. it also talks about fragmented sleep, slow-wave sleep which is a period of very deep sleep and REM sleep which is the dreaming time..
Fragmented sleep can suppress the birth of new brain cells in the hippocampus, where memory-making begins.
However, a more active role for the slow-wave sleep can emerge even in a power nap.
the experiment goes like this.. 20 English College students were made to learn chi words spelled with 2 characters like mother, sister.. half the students took a 90th minute nap.. when they woke up, they took took a mcq test of chi words they'd never seen before.. however, the nappers were able to do better than those non nappers.. The nappers did much better at automatically learning that the first of the two-pair characters in the words they'd memorized earlier always meant the same thing, like 妈妈, 姐姐.. that had a 女 in front..
super cool man..