Fra søvn til handling – en litteraturkartlegging om årvåkenhet og kognitiv ytelse etter brå oppvåkning

“Sleep inertia” refers to a transient period after awakening during which cognitive performance and alertness may be reduced. The effects are often most pronounced in the first minutes after awakening, but both duration and severity vary considerably across individuals and situations.

This report presents a scoping review (systematic literature mapping) on sleep inertia and cognitive performance following abrupt awakening, with a particular focus on military aviation and operational readiness contexts. The review comprises 16 publications.

The literature indicates a mismatch between subjective perceptions of alertness and objectively measured cognitive performance in the period following awakening. Self‑assessed operational readiness therefore does not necessarily provide a reliable indication of actual operational functioning. The findings suggest that sleep inertia may constitute a relevant human factor in aviation and other readiness‑related operational contexts, in which personnel are required to transition directly from sleep to safety‑critical tasks. However, much of the literature is based on laboratory studies and simulated tasks, which limits direct transferability to real-world operational settings. The findings therefore primarily provide an overall picture of cognitive performance and alertness following awakening, but do not support robust assessments of performance in individual operations.

A formal risk-of-bias assessment was not conducted, as this work was carried out as a scoping review. The findings should therefore be understood as a mapping of the available literature, not as a basis for estimating effect sizes or defining operational threshold values.