• Posted January 30, 2026

Afternoon Naps Are Good For The Brain — And Researchers Now Know Why

Having trouble powering through your afternoon workload?

A brief nap can rejuvenate your brain power, a new study says.

Even a short afternoon nap helps the brain recover and improve its ability to learn, researchers recently reported in the journal NeuroImage.

Napping helps reorganize connections between nerve cells called synapses, so that new information can be stored more effectively, researchers found.

Up to now, only a full night’s sleep has been shown to freshen these connections, researchers said.

“Our results suggest that even short periods of sleep enhance the brain’s capacity to encode new information” said senior researcher Dr. Christoph Nissen, former medical director of the sleep center at the University of Freiburg in Germany.

The brain is constantly taking in new impressions, thoughts and information during a person’s day.

This can lead to saturation, with the brain’s ability to learn decreasing steadily over time, researchers said.

Sleep helps refresh these nerve cells without causing people to lose important information, researchers said.

“The study shows that this ‘synaptic reset’ can happen with just an afternoon nap, clearing space for new memories to form,” said Nissen, who is now chief physician of psychiatry at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

For the study, researchers examined 20 healthy adults who either took a nap or stayed awake on two afternoons. Their afternoon nap lasted an average 45 minutes.

Afterward, researchers analyzed participants’ brains using EEG and transcranial magnetic stimulation, to assess the strength and flexibility of their brain’s synapses.

Results showed that after the nap, the overall strength of synaptic connections had been reduced — a sign of the restorative power of sleep.

At the same time, the brain’s ability to form new connections significantly improved, researchers found. As a result, the brain was better prepared to learn new content compared to when people remained awake.

“The study helps us understand how important even short periods of sleep are for mental recovery,” Dr. Kai Spiegelhalder said in a news release. He’s the head of the psychiatric sleep research and sleep medicine at the University of Freiburg.

“A short nap can help you think more clearly and continue working with concentration,” added Spiegelhalder, who was not involved in the new research.

These results provide a biological explanation for why people often perform better after they’ve had an afternoon nap, researchers said.

Naps can be especially helpful in professions or activities that require a high level of mental or physical performance, such as in music or sports or on high-risk jobs, researchers said.

“An afternoon nap can sustain performance under high demand,” Nissen said.

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on the benefits and drawbacks of naps.

SOURCE: University of Freiburg, news release, Jan. 28, 2026