A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley suggests that a mid-day nap may help a person learn better by essentially priming the brain for the rest of the days work.

Matthew Walker, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley, tested 39 young adults who were randomly put into two groups and were asked to learn 100 names and faces at noon and then another set of names and faces at 6 p.m.. One group napped for 90 minutes between these times and one did not.

In results presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego this past weekend, Walker reported that the group of subjects who napped improved their 6 p.m. scores by an average of 10 percent over their scores at noon. Subjects who did not sleep had poorer scores at 6 p.m..

Results suggest that sleep may actually prepare the brain for learning – not just allow for increased consolidation as previous research has found.