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To memorize well, you need to take breaks
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Did you know that those who study without interruption are less likely to succeed than those who allow themselves long pauses in memorizing new material?
Learning and memorization are accompanied by changes in the brain: in order for new information or a new skill to be firmly recorded in memory, new neural networks must be formed. The memory of what needs to be recorded is said to be consolidated, turning from short-term to long-term.
It is known that these processes depend on sleep: if the brain is deprived of sleep, memory consolidation occurs very poorly. In other words, if you have not had enough sleep, you should not take on new material, be it higher mathematics or a piece of music. But, as research by psychologists from the University of New South Wales (Australia) has shown, good learning depends not only on whether you have had enough sleep, but also on a competent study schedule. As researchers write in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, even when studying the same subject, it is important to take breaks periodically, since memory transformation occurs not only in sleep, but also in reality.
Scientists asked students to perform a difficult task on a computer: they had to follow the movements of a group of dots among distracting pictures that appeared and disappeared. The subjects were divided into several groups, each of which had to perform the task in its own way. One of the teams spent one hour training, the second - two hours without a break, the third - also two, but with an hour-long break. The rest could be any, at the discretion of the participants, but not sleep.
As a result, those who trained for one hour and studied with a break coped with the task better than those who studied a lot and without rest. It is important that the break was needed not as an interval between different tasks, but specifically as a pause in the same subject. It is worth noting that the data obtained by Australian psychologists are reminiscent of recent results of researchers from the University of Southern California (USA), who reported the benefits of daydreaming for the well-being of the nervous system.