Naps with stages spark learning

Napping shows potential as a way to stimulate learning, at least for volunteers performing a laboratory task that requires visual discriminations. There’s a catch, though, say psychologist Sara Mednick of Harvard University and her colleagues. Only naps consisting of both slow-wave sleep and rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep inspire improved performance on the task.

In fact, the volunteers’ speed in accurately doing the task increased as much after taking a 90-minute nap that contained both sleep stages as had previously been observed for people granted a full night’s slumber (SN: 7/22/00, p.