快猫短视频

EXECUTIVES who take a power nap in the office are on to something. Getting a little shut-eye during the working day does help us perform better, suggesting that everyone should be allowed to recharge their batteries with a quick siesta.

It is well known that a good night鈥檚 sleep helps us consolidate what we learned the previous day. But the benefits of a quick daytime kip were less clear. So Sara Mednick of Harvard University and her team asked 30 volunteers to do an exhausting task, involving identifying the orientation of a bar flashed in the corner of a screen. A third of the group got to snooze for an hour at 2 pm, another third slept for 30 minutes, while the rest stayed awake all day.

The volunteers were tested throughout a single day at 9 am, noon, 4 pm and 7 pm, with each session lasting an hour. The researchers measured how long people took to process the visual information and give the correct answer.

Those not allowed any sleep performed less well as the day went on. On average, they took just over 50 per cent longer to complete the task accurately in the evening as in the morning. Those allowed a short nap performed about the same throughout the day. But an hour鈥檚 power nap made a lot of difference. These volunteers actually improved their performance in the afternoon compared to their second morning session and stayed in fighting form until the last session of the day.

The researchers speculate that the mental boost depends on the type of sleep we get. The hour-long power nappers spent almost a third longer in 鈥渟hort-wave鈥� sleep on a test day than on a previous non-test day. Short-wave sleep may help stop performance deteriorating.