I’ve always envied my husband. He gets into a comfortable position, closes his eyes, and a minute later he’s already asleep. And he can do that at any time of day.

Dang!

I’ve never been able to nap during the day, except for very rare occasions when I was severely sleep-deprived or really really sick.

If I just had a bad night with insufficient sleep, I still can’t nap, even though I’d love to and feel like my brain needs it. But now there’s a new study that gives me (and other non-nappers; maybe you’re one of us?) hope: Aerobic exercise could also help protect some memory functions affected by sleep deprivation.

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This new study tested 53 healthy individuals (18-35 years) on a memory task after 30 hours of being awake. They were randomly assigned to one of three possible groups:

1. The nap group: People in this group were allowed to nap for 90 minutes before the memory task.

2. The exercise group: People in this group engaged in 20 minutes of moderate-to-high intensity aerobic exercise (cycling on a stationary bike at 80% maximum heart rate) before the memory task.

3. The control group: This group sat for 20 minutes on the stationary bike without pedaling.

The memory task consisted of viewing different images and, 3 days later (after recovering from sleep deprivation), viewing these images again, mixed with new images that hadn’t been presented before. Participants were asked to decide for each image whether they had or hadn’t seen it during the session 3 days earlier.

The researchers also tracked brain activity using electroencephalography while participants viewed the images.

After sleep deprivation, the nap group indicated lower fatigue levels than the exercise and control groups, which didn’t differ significantly. So the nap helped people feel less tired while exercise didn’t. That’s a win for napping.

On the memory test, both the nap and exercise groups outperformed the control group in recognizing pictures they had seen 3 days earlier. Hit rate was about 22% higher than in the control group.

So while the nap still wins regarding fatigue, performance improved with both exercise and a nap.

The brain activity measurements revealed differences between groups:

1. Sleep pressure, measured as slow-wave activity over frontal brain regions, was stronger in the exercise and control groups than in those who had napped. This result fits nicely with the lower subjective fatigue in the nap group.

2. Two brain mechanisms, namely reduced slow-wave brain activity before the pictures, and an enhanced slow-wave neural synchronicity during picture presentation, explained the improved memory performance in the nap group.

3. In the exercise group, the improved memory performance was instead explained by enhanced attention for the pictures and a shift in faster brain rhythms during picture presentation.

In other words, even though both the nap and exercise groups showed similar improvements in memory performance (as compared to the control group), the brain mechanisms behind the improvements were different. The researchers proposed that a nap made people more receptive to learning, whereas exercise improved the efficiency of brain networks.

These results show that the sleep-deprived brain benefits both from a 90-minute nap and a 20-minute bout of aerobic exercise. Since not everyone is a napper (like me!) and 90 minutes is also a bigger time investment than 20 minutes, exercise emerges as a viable alternative to boost brain function when you’re sleep-deprived.

Just two little extra points worth noting:

(1) Sleep deprivation was more extreme than just “a bad night” in this study, with 30 hours of continued wakefulness.

(2) The results point to naps and exercise as emergency measures, not as tools to replace sleep. Sleep is still a main priority.

So next time you’re sleep-deprived, you can also try a workout to help your brain work better. (Here’s a related newsletter issue about creatine’s effects on the sleep-deprived brain)

What else I’ve been up to:

My latest Medium article talks about bowel movements and brain function (you might have read this one in a previous newsletter edition):

Not a Medium member? Read this article for free with my friend link.

That’s it for today!

And now?

Until next time!

Best wishes,

Patricia (Dr. Patricia Schmidt) from creatorschmidt.com

P.S.:

Disclaimer:
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