Anyone who has experienced sleep deprivation knows the impact that it can have on your mind and body. Now researchers from UC Berkeley and Harvard Medical School have found a neural link between lack of sleep and emotional instability.
Using brain imaging in the first neural investigation into what happens to the emotional brain without sleep, results suggest that:
- a good night's rest can regulate our mood and help us cope with the next day's emotional challenges
- sleep deprivation excessively boosts the part of the brain most closely connected to depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders
"It's almost as though, without sleep, the brain had reverted back to more primitive patterns of activity, in that it was unable to put emotional experiences into context and produce controlled, appropriate responses," said Matthew Walker, director of UC Berkeley's Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory and senior author of the study, which will be published Oct. 22 in the journal Current Biology.
"Emotionally, you're not on a level playing field," Walker added.That's because the amygdala, the region of the brain that alerts the body to protect itself in times of danger, goes into overdrive on no sleep, according to the study. This consequently shuts down the prefrontal cortex, which commands logical reasoning, and thus prevents the release of chemicals needed to calm down the fight-or-flight reflex.
"The emotional centers of the brain were over 60 percent more reactive under conditions of sleep deprivation than in subjects who had obtained a normal night of sleep," Walker said.
The study's findings lay the groundwork for further investigation into the relationship between sleep and psychiatric illnesses. Clinical evidence has shown that some form of sleep disruption is present in almost all psychiatric disorders. The next step for researchers is to use brain imaging as a tool to identify whether the root problem is a sleep disorder or a mental health disorder.
6 comments:
Has anyone considered that the sleep disorder may be a sign of mental illness, rather than the cause?
Hi Chuck
Yes, that is one of the future directions of research. Historically doctors have believed that insomnia is a symptom of mental illness, but using brain imaging researchers are hoping to find out whether people have a sleep disorder that is separate from the psychiatric illness and learn more about cause and effect. The two are so interconnected that it's difficult to know - does lack of sleep cause mental illness or does mental illness interfere with sleep? It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation
Thanks for bringing it up, I may alter the post to reflect your questions...
This post helps explain why doctors tell mothers to sleep when their babies sleep. You need rest to be able to cope with the demands of a new baby!
This also explains why people who are deprived of sleep because of caretaking (taking care of an infant, an elderly person, an ill person) need to take care of themselves.
It must be very difficult for soldiers in active duty when they are only able to get a few hours of sleep a night.
from a personal point of view for me i think that not sleeping is a warning sign of a meltdown anbout to occur.(as i have experienced) It is almost as if i get so wound up sleeping becomes impossible I am most careful to slowdown and get some sleep at the first instance of having a bad nights sleep at night or if i have worries about things. In this way i can prevent myself from falling apart mentally.
Are the changes in brain functioning/chemistry that cause emotional instability due to lack of sleep related to or similar to the brain functioning/chemistry abnormailites seen in individual's with diagnosed emotional instability (any type) or borderline personality disorder?
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