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Everyone is interested in learning things and gaining new skills quicker and better. And recent research from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has shown us that this can be made easier than we may have thought.
We have known for a long time that rest, in particular sleep, is critical for learning new skills. In this case this is because connections between neurons, brain cells, have been shown to grow mostly during sleep, deep sleep particularly. So getting a good night’s sleep improves and consolidates learning whether that be cognitive skills or coordinative skills such as playing the piano or tennis. So far soo good.
“Our results support the idea that wakeful rest plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill. It appears to be the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced,”
What this latest research does though, is measure short breaks, and very short breaks at that. This is particularly interesting. What is even more fascinating is the way the researchers manage to measure this. Namely by measuring brain waves of…
