A demonstration of sleeping pods by MetroNaps is shown in New York in July. MetroNaps offers New Yorkers a chance to unwind in sleeping pods, ($14 for 20 minutes.) The same thinking that has made prefab housing appealing to prospective buyers has made a new breed of hotel rooms appealing to prospective hoteliers. Such cocoons would offer high design, at a relatively low price, and such functional accommodations may well attract a new kind of consumer, trained by airlines to sleep almost anywhere and able to interpret minimalism as a lifestyle choice. (Photo: Courtesy, The New York Times)

Twenty-nine-year Arshad Chowdhury, a former investment banker-turned-nap entrepreneur, offers what he thinks is the perfect solution to frenzied, sleep-deprived New Yorkers.

His company MetroNaps runs a sort of instant rest center in the heart of Manhattan where his MetroNaps Pods are designed to be precisely the kind of quick getaways that stressed out New Yorkers need. The pod design is reminiscent Stanley Kubrick’s film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’

Located on the 24th floor of the Empire State Building, MetroNaps offers a 20-minute nap for $14. In addition it also offers “Nap Passes” starting from $13.45 to $76.78.

Chowdhury says he hit upon the idea of MetroNaps when, as an investment banker, he found many of his colleagues becoming sleepy in the afternoon. He looked up some NASA data and found that the body temperature dips around that time. “That’s when you simply need a nap,” Chowdhury says.

MetroNaps takes care to create the right ambience. Its pods are housed in dimly-lit to near-dark rooms. Ambient sounds include bird chirping and waves crashing. Twenty minutes may not be enough time for a stressed New Yorker to fall asleep and feel rested, but Chowdhury says the ambience is such that people generally fall asleep.

In a city which is never supposed to sleep and where sleep deprivation is a serious urban health issue, MetroNaps is a potentially attractive alternative. “Napping may protect brain circuits from overuse until those neurons can consolidate what’s been learned about a procedure,” MetroNaps’ Website quotes neuroscientist Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School, and co-author of a new study on the beneficial effects of a nap.

In another study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), it was revealed that “evidence is mounting that sleep –– even a nap-appears to enhance information processing and learning.”

“New experiments by NIMH grantee Alan Hobson, M.D., Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., and colleagues at Harvard University show that a midday snooze reverses information overload and that a 20 percent overnight improvement in learning a motor skill is largely traceable to a late stage of sleep that some early risers might be missing. Overall, their studies suggest that the brain uses a night’s sleep to consolidate the memories of habits, actions and skills learned during the day. The bottom line: we should stop feeling guilty about taking that “power nap” at work or catching those extra winks the night before our piano recital,” it said.

Chowdhury’s enterprise has received extensive media attention with major newspapers writing about it. The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com and others have written about MetroNaps.