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Researchers believe that sleep affects learning and memory in two ways:

Lack of sleep impairs a person's ability to focus and learn efficiently.
Sleep is necessary to consolidate a memory (make it stick) so that it can be recalled in the future.

First, a sleep-deprived person cannot focus attention optimally and therefore cannot learn efficiently. Second, sleep itself has a role in the consolidation of memory, which is essential for learning new information.

Do you know a good, adequate hour of sleep at night boost our memory power.

Ever wonder how many hours of sleep you need to perform at your best?

Different biological circadian rhythms, or sleep/wake cycles, can vary from person to person. Someone who sleeps five hours may be able to perform just as well as someone who sleeps for ten.

It is important to find a balance without caffeine beverages. Otherwise, for every cup of coffee you consume, you need to drink twice the amount of water to stay hydrated.

And if you need more than one cup of coffee per day, chances are you aren’t receiving adequate rest.

“On average, it is important for you to receive at least seven hours of sleep per night.”

Good sleep helps to regulate the secretion of hormone called dopamine in our body and also helps in proper functioning in the reward center of the brain (known as the “nucleus accumbens”), which is known to make us feel good.

Interestingly, studies show power nap could improve memory by fivefold. Taking a power nap after studying helps to store the information better.

Oh well, what is power nap and how long should a power nap be ?

A power nap is a sleep session that happens during the day (ideally between 1:00 to 4:00 PM) lasting between 10 and 30 minutes.

Any longer and you run the risk of developing “sleep inertia”, that unpleasant groggy feeling that takes a considerable amount of time to shake off.

Taking a power nap helps to provide a quick boost of alertness, improve declarative memory, and also good for cognitive memory processing.

While we’re asleep, the brain cycles through a pattern lasting about 90 to 120 minutes. These stages include non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) (which is associated with dreaming).

During NREM sleep, we enter into slow-wave sleep, which is the deepest kind. Slow-wave sleep helps us remember facts, places, and faces, which is why the power nap helps us in this regard.

For useful tips, always do your to-do list before bedtime, so that when you wake up in the morning, the chances of forgetting any of the lists is lesser. It turns out that it is not surprising that they say “its better to sleep on it”.

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