Neuroscience Says This 30-Minute Habit Helps Your Brain Thrive

Hard-charging entrepreneurs used to brag about how little sleep they got. Thankfully, we’ve moved past that.

NOV 29, 2024 Illustration: Getty Images It happens to all of us, and yet most of us have been told there’s nothing we can do about it.

You have a bad night’s sleep. Maybe you were out having fun, maybe you were up doing work. Maybe you tossed and turned and tried, but you just couldn’t switch off your brain.

Then, it’s morning, and you’re exhausted.

You can’t wait for the day to be done, because you just want to get to bed. Or else maybe you motor on, caffeinated but cranky, convinced that even if you found the time for a short nap it wouldn’t do much for you, because REM sleep is supposedly the only sleep that really matters.

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Fret not, my sleep-deprived friend, because new neuroscience suggests that NREM sleep—meaning, straightforwardly, “non-rapid eye movement” phases of sleep—has specific benefits for the performance of the neurons in your brain.

Researchers at Rice University, Houston Methodist’s Center for Neural Systems Restoration, and Weill Cornell Medical College say they’ve uncovered some key secrets that might, in the words of an official summary , “chang[e] our fundamental understanding of how sleep boosts brainpower.”

Specifically, the summary continues, their research “reveals how NREM sleep—the lighter sleep one experiences when taking a nap, for example—fosters brain synchronization and enhances information encoding, shedding new light on this sleep stage.”

Their study was interesting, and frankly sounds kind of adorable. Using macaques as test subjects, which are a type of monkey, the researchers had the animals “perfor[m] a visual discrimination task” both before and after they were allowed 30 minutes of NREM sleep. Napping secrets

Put in layperson’s terms: They had the primates take a test, then let them take a 30-minute nap, and then had them take a similar test again.

The results, as you might imagine since they wrote an entire research paper about it, published in the most recent edition of the journal Science , were that the macaques performed better on the test after having had the pleasure of a nap.

“During sleep, we observed an increase in low-frequency delta wave activity and synchronized firing among neurons across different cortical regions,” said study author Natasha Kharas, who is a resident in neurological surgery at Weill Cornell. “After sleep, however, neuronal activity became more de-synchronized compared to before sleep, allowing neurons to fire more independently. This shift led to improved accuracy in information processing and performance in the visual tasks.”

Apparently, as a control, they also had macaques who were allowed to rest but not fall asleep do the tasks for a second time, but did not see the improved performance.

Afterward, the researchers attempted to determine if they could stimulate the same kinds of effects in the brain that are derived from NREM sleep without the animals actually having to nap, by using “low-frequency electrical stimulation of the visual cortex.” Surprising benefits

While less adorable than the idea of a bunch of monkeys having nap time together in a lab, the researchers said this artificial NREM sleep nevertheless resulted in similar improved performance.

While that wouldn’t impart other benefits of sleep besides these types of brain functions, it does suggest the possibility of a whole world of other practical applications.

Imagine, for example, finding ways to boost brainpower among people with sleep disorders, or even those who for practical reasons might not be able to get as much sleep as they need; think rescue personnel, soldiers, or as the study authors suggested, astronauts in space.

“Our study not only deepens our mechanistic understanding of sleep’s role in cognitive function but also breaks new ground by showing that specific patterns of brain stimulation could substitute for some benefits of sleep, pointing toward a future where we might boost brain function independently of sleep itself,” said study co-author Valentin Dragoi, a professor of neuroscience at Weill Cornell.

I’ve been writing about these kinds of subjects long enough to remember when hard-charging entrepreneurs would brag about how little sleep they got each night. Thankfully, we’ve moved past that.

We all have those days when we just didn’t get enough shuteye. Now, maybe you’ve got a bit more evidence to suggest it might be worth working a 30-minute or so catch-up into your day when that happens.

Find a cozy spot, doze off, and maybe dream of napping macaques.

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