Naps, cognition and performance

Summary 

Daytime napping is a frequent habit of many individuals, whether healthy or not, and may occur in a wide variety of contexts. There are several reasons for napping in the human adult, including prophylactic strategies or recuperative need, respectively before or after sleep loss, or even pure appetitive drive. Thus, it is of great theoretical and clinical interest to assess the impact of naps on individuals' performance, especially on cognitive functioning. As the outgrowth of a symposium held by the authors at the 5th Congress of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies in Cairns, Australia, September 2007, this review will specifically explore: a) the newly developed experimental daytime split-sleep schedules and their effects on recovery, compared with those deriving from a single consolidated sleep episode of equal duration; b) whether naps may be beneficial to wakefulness performance in the working context, through accurate review of “on field” studies; c) the impact of naps on cognition, in light of the very recent advances in the study of naps and memory processes; d) the main features of napping behavior in older individuals and its impact on their health and general functioning, since it is widely recognized that napping may change as a result of the aging process.

Keywords: Aging, Cognitive functions, Memory, Naps, Performance, Shift work, Sleepiness, Split-sleep