Here’s a great exercise for self improvement! According to new research by Prof. Avi Karni and Dr. Maria Korman of the Center for Brain and Behavior Research at the University of Haifah, a ninety minute daytime nap helps speed up the process of long term memory consolidation. Now that is a self-help regimen I can get on board with!

“We still don’t know the exact mechanism of the memory process that occurs during sleep, but the results of this research suggest the possibility that it is possible to speed up memory consolidation, and in the future, we may be able to do it artificially,” said Prof. Karni.

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout! Artificial sleep! (What? Like hypnosis or Rapid Eye Technology?!!)

In the study, the group that slept in the afternoon showed a distinct improvement in their task performance by that evening, as opposed to the group that stayed awake, which did not exhibit any improvement. Following an entire night’s sleep, both groups exhibited the same skill level. “This part of the research showed that a daytime nap speeds up performance improvement in the brain. After a night’s sleep the two groups were at the same level, but the group that slept in the afternoon improved much faster than the group that stayed awake,” stressed Prof. Karni.

A second experiment showed that another aspect of memory consolidation is accelerated by sleep. It was previously shown that during the 6-8 hours after completing an effective practice session, the neural process of “how” memory consolidation is susceptible to interference, such that if, for example, one learns or performs a second, different task, one’s brain will not be able to successfully remember the first trained task. However, when a group of participants was allowed a 90 minute nap between learning the first set of movements and the second, they did not show much improvement in the evening, but on the following morning these participants showed a marked improvement of their performance, as if there had been no interference at all.

“This part of the study demonstrated, for the first time, that daytime sleep can shorten the time “how to” memory becomes immune to interference and forgetting. Instead of 6-8 hours, the brain consolidated the memory during the 90 minute nap,” explains Prof. The elucidation of the actual mechanisms involved, say the researchers, could enable the development of methods to accelerate memory consolidation in adults and to create stable memories in a short time.

Until then, if you need to memorize something quickly or if your schedule is filled with different activities that require learning “how” to do things, it may be worthwhile to find the time for an afternoon nap. Or you could learn self-hypnosis or Rapid Eye Technology (RET)