Recharge the brain with a nap
Our son Scott has been in Guangzhou, China, for more than a month.
With a dozen teachers, 130 Grade 7 Xavier School students are immersing themselves in Chinese culture, language and studies.
Days and nights are hectic. Aside from tests, assignments and intramurals, the boys do their laundry and clean the bathroom.
But Scott loves it and manages to stay strong and alert. His secret? He takes a nap.
The boys are up by 6 a.m. and do not sleep until 10 p.m., at the earliest. So after lunch and before afternoon studies, Scott naps for half an hour, waking up refreshed and ready for more. Some friends have followed his lead, with good results.
A boost to learning ability
Scott and his friends are doing the right thing, going by what American molecular biologist John Medina says.
In mid-afternoon, “it can be nearly impossible to get anything done, and if you attempt to push through, which is what most of us do, you [will be] fighting a gnawing tiredness,” he says. “The brain really wants to take a nap and doesn’t care what its owner is doing.”
Scientist Mark Rosekind found that a 26-minute nap improved by 34 percent the performance of pilots of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Other researchers found that a 45-minute nap made students sharper, the effect lasting more than six hours.
“What if businesses and schools took [naps] seriously?” Medina says. “No meetings or classes … no high-demand presentations and no critical exams … would be scheduled at these times. Instead, there would be deliberately planned downshifts. Naps would be accorded deference … People hired for their intellectual strength would be allowed to keep that strength in tip-top shape.”
Better cognition
In his remarkable book “Brain Rules,” Medina culls from his lifelong work on the brain and lists several principles “for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school.” Aside from sleep, Medina also touts the benefits of physical exercise, especially aerobic activities.
Exercise makes blood flow to the brain, increasing glucose to burn for energy and oxygen to “soak up the toxic electrons” that remain. Just 20-30 minutes of walking increases protein production that makes brain cells communicate better. Aerobic exercise twice a week decreases the risk of dementia by 50 percent and Alzheimer’s by 60 percent.
Physician and athlete Dr. Antronette Yancey found that when children exercised aerobically, their minds worked better. When they stopped exercising, the cognitive gain disappeared.
Fit kids grasp ideas and focus better than sedentary classmates.
Yancey says kids who exercise are less disruptive. Having higher self-esteem, they are less depressed and less anxious. They are likely to be happier.
But physical education classes have unfortunately decreased throughout the United States and in many schools in the Philippines. “Cutting off physical exercise—the very activity most likely to promote cognitive performance—to do better on a test score is like trying to gain weight by starving yourself,” Medina says.
Brains can’t multitask
“Multitasking is a myth,” Medina says. “The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time.” Even if students claim they can multitask, studies show that attention, and therefore performance, suffers.
Medina describes several processes when we try to multitask, from alerting the cortex and firing of appropriate neurons to engaging different parts of the brain and activating various commands. These steps occur every time we switch from one task to another.
“[The whole process] is time-consuming, and sequential,” says Medina. “That’s why we can’t multitask. That’s why people find themselves losing track of previous progress and needing to start over, muttering things like ‘Now where was I?’ each time they switch tasks.”
Studies show that people who are interrupted take 50 percent longer to finish something and, worse, make 50 percent more errors in everything. Students who try to write a term paper while instant messaging, playing games, rocking to music will not do any of these things as well as if they do them one at a time.
Multitasking can literally kill. Eating, putting on makeup, talking on a cell phone while driving lead to significantly more accidents.
“Cell phone talkers are a half-second slower to hit the brakes in emergencies, slower to return to normal speed afterwards, and more wild in their following distance behind the vehicle in front of them,” Medina says. “In a half-second, a driver going 70 miles per hour travels 51 feet. Given that 80 percent of crashes happen within three seconds of distraction, increasing your amount of task-switching increases your risk of an accident. More than 50 percent of the visual cues are missed by cell phone talkers, [so] they get in more wrecks than anyone except very drunk drivers.”
Never stop exploring
In China, Scott’s group is doing a science experiment: testing whether China-made sticky tapes are better than those made in the Philippines. The boys are now designing tests for adhesive strength.
When he was growing up, Scott turned our house into his own lab. Mishaps occurred, but all of us survived.
“We do not outgrow the thirst for knowledge,” Medina says. Scientists used to think “we are born with all the brain cells we were going to get, and that they steadily eroded in a depressing journey to old age.”
Research now shows that the brain continues to create new cells for learning, and it responds to new experiences.
“Brain Rules” by John Medina is available in National Book Store. Visit www.brainrules.net.
E-mail the author at [email protected]
