Afternoon Nap refreshes the brain's capacity to learn

Relevant paper to the article:

* Ellenbogen J, Hu P, Payne JD, Titone D & Walker MP. Human relational memory requires time and sleep. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2007; 104: 7723-7728. http://walkerlab.berkeley.edu/reprints/Ellenbogen&Walker...

Also the authors web page at Berkeley:

* http://walkerlab.berkeley.edu/papers.html

The OP says you have to sleep long enough to go through all the sleep cycles. It does not mention how long you should sleep (through it does reference 100 minutes).

Anyone know the best length to sleep?

What I find annoying that at work I can see people wasting time on facebook, gchat, etc... while a nap is frowned upon.

Clicking stuff and pressing keys is their job, while sleeping is not. It makes perfect sense.

(I work in a pretty enlightened workplace, and I'm sure I could take a nap if I wanted. The problem is, cubicles aren't very comfy. I just wait until I get home instead.)

Think of it as similar to rebooting a computer to get it to work more smoothly.

My brain does not run Windows.

hah. If your brain ran BSD, you wouldn't have to sleep for the next 650 days in a row... which would mean you'd have fatal familia insomnia, death guaranteed in a few years.

Poll: Who else is a power napper, how long on average, and when on average?

Time = 20-40 minutes, sometimes as little as 10 or as long as an hour. Sometimes skip a day. To cure east-to-west jet lag same day I run on excitement from arrival until out of gas a few hours later, then 2-hour deep sleep, then have someone force me to get up, then feel fine and stay up until midnight or 1:00AM, then wake up at the next morning rested and synced.

When = when I feel it, which is usually around 3:00PM +/- an hour.

After nap = totally refreshed, as if it was a full night sleep.

Full night sleep = around 6-7 hours usually, sometimes as few as three (rarely), sometimes as many as nine (rarely). The short nights or long nights work fine.

The main thing is just awareness and going with the flow (for me, anyway). You guys?

I nap for about 20 minutes at about an hour after lunch(usually 1 to 1:30 PM). If I had a 6 hour sleep cycle, I nap for about 40 minutes. I definitely can think and program better after the nap. I nap in my car. I drive out to a Publix lot and do it. I have tinted windows, so people seem not to realize I am napping in it. My real trouble is waking up early. In my office, my CEO shows up at 6 AM and everyone else shows up an hour after that. So I have trouble getting up at 7:30 but I am working on it.

I found such recommendations about as consistent and clear as food recommendations.

Everything cited as being good is also at some time cited as bad.

Here's "daytime naps linked to strokes (in older people)" as the counter argument: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=44272&sectionid=351... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7257270.stm

I like body hacks as much as anyone, but ultimately I think that people should just do what works for them.

I found the cycle is 30 minutes in experience in my sleep testing. The reason they picked 100 minutes is because it is a multiple of 30. 30+30+30+(falling asleep+waking up) = 100 minutes.