Sleep-dependent learning: a nap is as good as a night.
The learning of perceptual skills has been shown in some cases to depend on the plasticity of the visual cortex and to require post-training nocturnal sleep. We now report that sleep-dependent learning of a texture discrimination task can be accomplished in humans by brief (60- 90 min) naps containing both slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This nap-dependent learning closely resembled that previously reported for an 8-h night of sleep in terms of magnitude, sleep-stage dependency and retinotopic specificity, and it was additive to subsequent sleep-dependent improvement, such that performance over 24 h showed as much learning as is normally seen after twice that length of time. Thus, from the perspective of behavioral improvement, a nap is as good as a night of sleep for learning on this perceptual task.
Mednick
Sara
S
Psychology Department, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. smednick@post.harvard.edu
Nakayama
Ken
K
Stickgold
Robert
R
D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time; D012146:Rest; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D012894:Sleep Stages / Q000502:physiology; D012895:Sleep, REM / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis