If you thought that taking a nap is wasting your time then think again! Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have stated that taking naps not only makes you smarter but also boosts your power of learning.

Longer hours of keeping away mean lesser ability of learning things. A 60 minutes nap can add to your learning ability in a big way, says Matthew Walker, a Berkeley professor of psychology and the lead investigator of a study.

It means that a goodnight sleep midday siesta could increase intelligence.

If you do an all-nighter, then your learning ability would decrease by 40 per cent, earlier research has shown. This is caused by sleep deprivation that means learning deficit which is caused by a shutting down of brain regions.

About 39 people were divided into a group. One gropu was asked to take a nap and another was not given one. They were given difficult-to-learn tasks at noon. Both the groups performed equal. One group was asked to take a nap at 2 pm and then they were given learning tasks. The group that had a nap performed much better.

Walker said, "It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you're not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder."