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The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgamesEARTHDATE: February 28, 2010
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REAL LIFE NEWS: WAKE ME UP WHEN IT'S TIME TO GO HOMEby HazedIf you are prone to dozing off at work, then don't worry - scientists have just completed a study which shows that having a little snooze at work is a good thing. It turns out that your hippocampus - the part of the brain involved in storing "fact-based memories" - needs to process new information and file it away every so often, and in order to do this it needs you to be asleep. Matthew Walker, a psychologist from UC Berkeley in California, explained: "It's as though the email inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact emails, you're not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder." The study compared two groups and their performance in "rigorous learning tasks" designed to fill the hippocampus up with new info. Both groups showed similar performance in such a task undertaken just before lunch. However, in the middle of the afternoon, one group had a nice refreshing nap, and the second group stayed awake. Once nap-time was over the two groups tackled another task, and this time the ones who had snoozed showed significantly better performance than the ones that had stayed awake. You can read more about this study here - maybe you should show it your boss to try to persuade him/her that when you put your head down on the desk and drop off to sleep, you're only doing it to improve your performance! |
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