It was discovered that, across three very different declarative memory tasks, a nap benefited performance compared to comparable periods of wakefulness, but only for those subjects that strongly acquired the tasks during the training session.
"These results suggest that there is a threshold acquisition level that has to be obtained for sleep to optimally process the memory," said Dr. Tucker. "The importance of this finding is that sleep may not indiscriminately process all information we acquire during wakefulness, only the information we learn well."
I should note too that the figure in the article is 45 minutes of REM sleep. This isn't necessarily the 10 minute power nap but rather a siesta. Not quite my definition of "brief" as stated in the opening sentence of the article but clearly not a full-on sleep session.
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