By about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, I could use a nap, but the show must go on.  Now, a new study says that napping before you learn something new may help you retain the new information.

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"A University of California, Berkeley reports while it is a well known fact that a good night's sleep is crucial for retaining knowledge learned earlier in the day, a new study shows that taking a nap before you learn something new is equally important. Volunteers who took a 100 minute nap before launching into an evening memorization task scored an average of 20 percentage points higher on the test compared to participants who took the test without first getting a little shuteye. "It really seems to be the first evidence that we are aware of that indicates a proactive benefit of sleep," says Matthew Walker, a professor of psychology and neuroscience. "It's not simply enough to sleep after learning. It turns out you also need to sleep before learning." (Sun)

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