Looks like there's more to the afternoon "siesta" than just taking 40 winks. A new study proposes a 45 to 60 minute siesta or power nap is good for your health and also helps you better recall information you previously remembered.

That's because this amount of time can really help your brain function and memory, said a study conducted by researchers from at Saarland University's Experimental Neuropsychology Unit.

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"A short nap at the office or in school is enough to significantly improve learning success. said study leader Alex Mecklinger. "Wherever people are in a learning environment, we should think seriously about the positive effects of sleep.

"Even a short sleep lasting 45 to 60 minutes produces a five-fold improvement in information retrieval from memory."

In their study, researchers worked with 41 study subjects that were shown a list of 90 single words and 120 unrelated words, or word pairs.

"A word pair might, for example, be 'milk-taxi.' Familiarity is of no use here when participants try to remember this word pair because they have never heard this particular word combination before and it is essentially without meaning." said Mecklinger.

"They therefore need to access the specific memory of the corresponding episode in the hippocampus."

Participants were quickly tested on how well they recalled the words. Half of the participants then watched a DVD, while the other half were told to nap for up to 90 minutes.

The nappers were connected to an electroencephalogram (EEG) that measured "sleep spindles," which are bursts of activity in the hippocampus, the section of the brain that plays a large role in memory consolidation.

"We suspect that certain types of memory content, particularly information that was previously tagged, is preferentially consolidated during this type of brain activity," Mecklinger said.

After the nap or DVD, participants were again asked to recall the words. Those that took a nap were able to remember word pairs five times better than those who watched the DVD.

"Positive correlations were observed between spindle density during slow-wave-sleep and AM posttest performance as well as between spindle density during non-REM sleep and AM baseline performance, showing that successful learning and retrieval both before and after sleep relates to spindle density during nap sleep," study authors wrote.

"Together, these results speak for a selective beneficial impact of naps on hippocampus-dependent memories."