I’ve always told my patients that my memory is like eleven men on a ten man bench. You try to remember something new, and something you know already, falls off the other end - you know, the memory stores are full up (and there’s plenty of new stuff to have to try and remember in the field of medicine - but that’s a whole other post).

Maybe there;s a solution to this too many people on the bench/CRS? 

Now, an experiment where students took a 90 minute nap at 2 pm and were tested at 6 pm to see how well they could learn new stuff has sort of vindicated this idea - but with an up-to-date twist.

Compared to students who didn’t take a nap, the nappers performed much better, according to lead researcher, Assistant Professor of psychology Matthew Walker from University of California San Diego.

Scientists have long wondered why our brain spends so much time in Stage 2 non-REM sleep, between REM sleep (when we dream) and deep/non-REM sleep (when all sorts of restorative functions seem to take place).

Now it seems it is during this time that we are storing our memories, moving them from the temporary storage in the hippocampus to more permanent memory in the pre-frontal cortex.

When your hippocampus is full, rather than likening it to a bench that is filled to capacity, Dr Matthews uses the more modern analogy of your e-mail in box.

“It’s as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you’re not going to receive any more.”

 Students should nap 

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