

Afternoon Nap refreshes the brain's capacity to learn - eagleal
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/636247.html

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eagleal
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...](http://walkerlab.berkeley.edu/reprints/Ellenbogen&Walker_PNAS_2007.pdf)

Also the authors web page at Berkeley:

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

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DTrejo
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?

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

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jrockway
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.)

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jrockway
_Think of it as similar to rebooting a computer to get it to work more
smoothly._

My brain does not run Windows.

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veemjeem
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.

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chris123
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?

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sman
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.

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buro9
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://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=44272&sectionid=3510210)
<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.

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maeon3
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.

