A good night’s sleep is crucial to storing knowledge learned earlier in the day - that much was known. Now, a new study finds that getting shut-eye before you learn is important, too.

Volunteers who took a 100-minute nap before launching into an evening memorization task scored an average of 20 percentage points higher on the memory test compared with people who did the memorization without snoozing first.

‘It really seems to be the first evidence that we’re aware of that indicates a proactive benefit of sleep1,’ study co-author Matthew Walker, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, told LiveScience.
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‘It’s not simply enough to sleep after learning,’ Walker said. ‘It turns out you also need to sleep before learning.’

Refreshing naps

Earlier research has found that dreams boost learning2, with one study suggesting a 90-minute nap3 may help lock in long-term memories. But Walker’s research, published this week in the journal Current Biology, finds that another phase of sleep, called nonrapid eye movement (NREM) is most closely linked to the learning boost provided by a nap.

Walker and his colleagues recruited 44 […]