The findings, by a team of neuropsychologists at Saarland University, suggests a brief siesta can make a big difference in boosting your memory.
 

“Even a short sleep lasting 45 to 60 minutes produces a five-fold improvement in information retrieval from memory,” explained Axel Mecklinger, who helped conduct the study. “A short nap at the office or in school is enough to significantly improve learning success. Wherever people are in a learning environment, we should think seriously about the positive effects of sleep.”
 

For the study, researchers compared two groups of individuals who learned a series of word pairs. One group watched DVDs after the lesson, while the other group slept.
 

The results found that the nappers performed significantly better than the DVD-watching group when it came to remembering the word pairs.
 

The researchers were particularly focused on the role of the hippocampus — a region of the brain in which memories are formed — and  the process by which previously learned information is transferred into long-term memory storage.
 

“We examined a particular type of brain activity, known as ‘sleep spindles, that plays an important role in memory consolidation during sleep,” said Sara Studte. “We suspect that certain types of memory content, particularly information that was previously tagged, is preferentially consolidated during this type of brain activity.”
 

Newly learned information is essentially labeled and filed away, making it easier to recall at some later time.