Naps may improve memory, according to preliminary findings of a new study highlighted in Health Day News Feb. 21, 2010.

According to the article, preliminary findings from the study showed that afternoon naps prepare the brain to remember things.

The study asked 39 young adults to participate in a memory exercise that required them to remember names and faces. The participants were tested on that information later in the evening after half of the group had taken a 100 minute nap while the other half remained awake.

The results showed that the participants who did not take a nap scored about 10 percent worse on the memory test than the participants who did take a nap.

Matthew Walker, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley and the study’s author, was interviewed in the article. He said that the findings suggests that the non-dreaming sleep that occurs during naps helps to boost memory and that sleeping before learning may be important to prepare the brain for new information.

According to the article, the researchers believe that memory-enhancing sleeps occurs between deep sleep and dream state and that people then must sleep long enough to reach that sleep cycle.

The study’s findings were being presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science in San Diego.