NASA Naps

NASA is studying one of my favorite activities ;-)

Although many astronauts report feeling fully rested after only six hours of sleep, the fact is, sleeplessness can cause irritability, forgetfulness and fatigue--none of which astronauts need to deal with while piloting complicated 'ships that hurtle through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour.

The solution seems simple: Take a nap.

[Science at Nasa, June 3, 2005]

Ah. My favorite solution to many problems :-)

But naps are a double-edged sword. Sometimes napping can leave you feeling even drowsier than before. If your body enters a deep sleep, trying to wake after only an hour or so can be very unpleasant, and you might remain groggy for some time afterward. This is called "sleep inertia."

Why do naps sometimes backfire? Researchers don't yet know the physical causes of sleep inertia, but they would like to be able to predict, at least, when it's going to strike. This could help doctors prescribe naps of the right time and duration for drowsy people in high-risk professions.
...
In general, they found, longer naps were better. No surprise there. But they also found that some cognitive functions benefited more from napping than others:

"To our amazement, working memory performance benefited from the naps, [but] vigilance and basic alertness did not benefit very much", says [David Dinges, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine].
...
"Working memory," he explains, "involves focusing attention on one task while holding other tasks in memory ... and is a fundamental ability critical to performing complex work [like piloting a spaceship]. A poor working memory could result in errors."

For vigilance and alertness, which involve the ability to maintain sustained attention and to notice important details, they found that the total amount of sleep during 24 hours remained the most important factor.

Interesting.

Get plenty of sleep — and take a nap.

NASA Naps - posted at Wed, 08 Jun, 21:45 Pacific | «e»