A brief nap could boost people's memory, according to new research.

A brief nap could boost people's memory, according to new research.

Researchers at The City University of New York found that having a brief sleep improved people's ability to remember things.

Volunteers were told to memorise pairs of words. When they were tested straight afterwards and six hours later, those who had been allowed a nap of up to one hour before the retest achieved 15 percent higher scores than the volunteers who had not been allowed to go to sleep.

The researchers told New Scientist magazine: "Traditionally, time devoted to daytime napping has been considered counterproductive ."

But they added that it now seemed that sleep was "an important mechanism for memory formation".

The study was published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, the magazine said.

一项最新调查表明，小睡能增强记忆力。

纽约城市大学的研究者们发现，小睡一觉能提高人的记忆力。

研究人员让参加调查的志愿者记住几组单词，并在分别记完之后和6小时后对他们进行测试。结果发现，那些在接受再次测试前小睡了1小时的人比未小睡的人得分高出15个百分点。

研究人员在接受《新科学家》杂志采访时说："人们一直认为白天小睡起不到什么积极作用。"

但是，现在看来，睡眠"是形成记忆的一个重要途径"。

据《新科学家》杂志介绍，此项研究结果发表在《学习和记忆神经生物学》上。

nap : a brief sleep,often during the day（白天的小睡） 

counterproductive :tending to hinder rather than serve one's purpose（起不到作用的；达不到预期目标的）