{"id":243848,"date":"2026-09-10T01:19:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/scientists-discover-exercise-can-match-one-key-benefit-of-sleep-for-the-brain"},"modified":"2026-09-10T01:19:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:19:37","slug":"scientists-discover-exercise-can-match-one-key-benefit-of-sleep-for-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/scientists-discover-exercise-can-match-one-key-benefit-of-sleep-for-the-brain","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discover Exercise Can Match One Key Benefit of Sleep for the Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-discover-exercise-can-match-one-key-benefit-of-sleep-for-the-brain2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>One sleepless night can blur the brain, but just 20 minutes of exercise or a well-timed nap may help new memories survive for days.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/tag\/mcgill-university\/\">McGill University<\/a>-led study, participants who exercised for 20 minutes or slept for 90 minutes after prolonged wakefulness performed about 22 percent better on a delayed memory test than those who did neither. The findings, published in <em><i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/i> (PNAS)<\/em>, suggest that two very different interventions can partially protect memory when adequate sleep is temporarily out of reach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSleep loss affects nearly every aspect of how we think and function, but many people can\u2019t simply stop what they\u2019re doing and get more sleep,\u201d said senior author Marc Roig, a professor in McGill\u2019s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy. \u201cOur findings show that even a brief bout of exercise may help preserve one of our most important cognitive abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One sleepless night can blur the brain, but just 20 minutes of exercise or a well-timed nap may help new memories survive for days. In a McGill University-led study, participants who exercised for 20 minutes or slept for 90 minutes after prolonged wakefulness performed about 22 percent better on a delayed memory test than those [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1495,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}