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. 

    一項(xiàng)最新調(diào)查表明，小睡能增強(qiáng)記憶力。 

    紐約城市大學(xué)的研究者們發(fā)現(xiàn)，小睡一覺能提高人的記憶力。 

    研究人員讓參加調(diào)查的志愿者記住幾組單詞，并在分別記完之后和6小時(shí)后對他們進(jìn)行測試。結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)，那些在接受再次測試前小睡了1小時(shí)的人比未小睡的人得分高出15個(gè)百分點(diǎn)。 

    研究人員在接受《新科學(xué)家》雜志采訪時(shí)說："人們一直認(rèn)為白天小睡起不到什么積極作用。" 

    但是，現(xiàn)在看來，睡眠"是形成記憶的一個(gè)重要途徑"。

    據(jù)《新科學(xué)家》雜志介紹，此項(xiàng)研究結(jié)果發(fā)表在《學(xué)習(xí)和記憶神經(jīng)生物學(xué)》上