A 30-Minute, but Not a 10-Minute Nighttime Nap is Associated with Sleep Inertia

To assess sleep inertia following 10-min and 30-min naps during a simulated night shift.

Thirty-one healthy adults (aged 21-35 y; 18 females) participated in a 3-day laboratory study that included one baseline (BL) sleep (22:00-07:00) and one experimental night involving randomization to either: total sleep deprivation (NO-NAP), a 10-min nap (10-NAP) or a 30-min nap (30-NAP). Nap opportunities ended at 04:00. A 3-min psychomotor vigilance task (PVT-B), digit-symbol substitution task (DSST), fatigue scale, sleepiness scale, and self-rated performance scale were undertaken pre-nap (03:00) and at 2, 17, 32, and 47 min post-nap.

The 30-NAP (14.7 ± 5.7 min) had more slow wave sleep than the 10-NAP (0.8 ± 1.5 min; P < 0.001) condition. In the NO-NAP condition, PVT-B performance was worse than pre-nap (4.6 ± 0.3 1/sec) at 47 min post-nap (4.1 ± 0.4 1/sec; P < 0.001). There was no change across time in the 10-NAP condition. In the 30-NAP condition, performance immediately deteriorated from pre-nap (4.3 ± 0.3 1/sec) and was still worse at 47 min post-nap (4.0 ± 0.5 1/sec; P < 0.015). DSST performance deteriorated in the NO-NAP (worse than pre-nap from 17 to 47 min; P < 0.008), did not change in the 10-NAP, and was impaired 2 min post-nap in the 30-NAP condition (P = 0.028). All conditions self-rated performance as better than pre-nap for all post-nap test points (P < 0.001).

This study is the first to show that a 10-min (but not a 30-min) nighttime nap had minimal sleep inertia and helped to mitigate short-term performance impairment during a simulated night shift. Self-rated performance did not reflect objective performance following a nap.