

What Naps Do For Your Brain - KhalidLondon
http://m.fastcompany.com/3017356/work-smart/the-revealing-science-behind-what-naps-do-to-your-brain-and-why-you-should-have-o

======
dcre
TL;DR: the word "brain" in popular-science article titles is almost always
clickbait and almost always bullshit.

This article is a great example of something I notice way too often: in so
many articles that are supposedly about the brain, if you replace all the
brain talk with talk about the mind, _virtually nothing about the article
changes_.

In most of this article, that replacement isn't even necessary since there's
very little brain talk, considering the word "brain" is in the title. It's
almost all about tests of cognitive performance and visual perception. (Yes,
everyone knows cognitive performance depends in some way on your brain — but
from the test's point of view it doesn't matter whether you have neurons or
jello or a dancing bear inside your head giving you the answers.)

But even the one part that does seem to rely on neuroscience only talks about
the time it takes neurons to form connections. I'm sure it's true, but how
different would our understanding of napping really be if we had never heard
of synapses at all? At least, how different as far as this article is
concerned? We'd still be able to talk about a schedule of learning just the
same.

I'm not trying to insult academic (i.e., _real_ ) neuroscience. I've read
several neuroscientists who express similar frustration with this type of
publicization of their work.

Edit: I like naps just fine.

------
vanderZwan
Naps are one thing, but the older I get the more I am under the impression
that my body very strongly desires to follow a segmented sleep rhythm - I tend
to get very sleepy in the late afternoon. Sadly that's a time filled with many
activities that often make it impossible for me to "listen" to my body, so to
speak, and if I stay awake I don't really get sleepy again until after
midnight, which makes a long sleep during the night problematic.

However, when I actually have the opportunity to take a long afternoon nap, I
sleep in two separate three-and-a-half to four hour periods. In my experience
I feel much better rested when following this sleeping pattern than when
trying to sleep in a constant eight hour block.

~~~
Amadou
_I sleep in two separate three-and-a-half to four hour periods. In my
experience I feel much better rested when following this sleeping pattern than
when trying to sleep in a constant eight hour block._

Looks like there is historical evidence for a "first sleep" and a "second
sleep" and that 8-hour stretches are a product of the last century or two.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-
sleep.html?pagewanted=all)

(hope the paywall lets you in)

------
kabdib
So, how many of you take naps at work?

[raises hand]

"Civilized societies have siestas." :-)

------
sgdesign
You have to admire Buffer's PR skills. By writing that seemingly random post
about naps and getting it republished, they end up getting a link to their
site in the first paragraph of an article on a major blog.

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to my nap.

------
robalfonso
At our office we keep a cot in an office on the 2nd floor. Almost everyone on
the dev team has grabbed a nap at some point. I'd rather a 20 minute nap and
feel refreshed then trying to keep slogging away drowsy from whatever reason
(big lunch, up late the night before whatever). Never had anyone abuse it, max
nap was probably 45 minutes someone took with the avg being around 20.

~~~
agumonkey
I know a guy who refuses any sleep time at work. He's smart and pragmatic, yet
he can't accept doing this on the workplace at paid times, even though he will
fight sleep for hours (chat, feeds, games).

I wonder how many of us fell asleep at noon, woke up feeling they must have
lost hours because you feel so pumped suddenly, when it was in fact just ~20
minutes.

Pity his high stress high creativity job wasn't greeted with a nap room, many
times I've heard people mention they got new ideas just after going to bed.

------
robg
I was never a nap guy. But in testing our biosensing watch I've been amazed
that naps reliably reduce my stress and in as little as ten minutes. I'm now
up to over 20 naps and they've all had the same effect. I wonder actually if
the cognitive benefits might be due more to reduced stress and anxiety. It's
something we'll continue to investigate.

------
zebra
I wish that nap time becomes a standard practice everywhere. Just like in
Korea.

After lunch and 20 min nap I feel like newborn. And I have the same power for
work as in the morning. And in contrast if the lunch was too heavy I may feel
groggy the whole afternoon.

So, yes, naps work for me very well.

~~~
jtreminio
I am become a zombie when I eat carbs during my lunch.

If, however, I replace the carb-heavy lunch with a big, fatty steak I feel
right as rain throughout the rest of the day.

------
contextual
Tony Schwartz in his book "The Way We're Working Isn't Working" is big on
naps. It's basically the crux of the book. In it, he mentions a study on
laboratory mice. They were deprived of sleeping or even being unconscious
until they died.

From this Tony Schwatz deduces we have a daily nap.

Michel Jouvet[1] was the researcher who developed Modafinil. In one of his
experiments, Jouvet deprived cats of sleep until they drowned in a vat of
water. On average, the cats survived 35 days with only micro-sleep[2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Jouvet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Jouvet)
[2] [http://psychology4a.com/sleep8.htm](http://psychology4a.com/sleep8.htm)

------
roasbeef
If you think naps are effective, give meditation a shot.

~~~
rralian
Usually when I try to nap, that's all it winds up being -- me laying there
thinking, and eventually giving up on the nap.

