Sleep Loss Hijacks the Brain's Activity During Learning

Sleep is essential for consolidating our memories, and sleep deprivation has long been known to interfere with learning and memory. A new study reveals that getting only half a night's sleep as many medical workers and military personnel often hijacks the brain's ability to unlearn fear-related memories that might put people at higher risk of conditions like anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. The findings of the study are published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.// "This study gives us with new insights into how sleep deprivation impairs brain function to disrupt fear extinction," stated Cameron Carter, MD.

The researchers examined 150 healthy adults in the sleep laboratory. One-third of participants got normal sleep, one third were sleep restricted, so they slept only the first half the night, and one third were sleep-deprived, so they got no sleep at all. In the morning, all the participants underwent fear conditioning.

Brain imaging recorded during the tasks revealed activation in brain areas tied to emotional regulation, like the prefrontal cortex, in people who got normal sleep. But the brain activity looked very different in people with restricted sleep, stated Dr. Pace-Schott. "We found that among the three groups, those who had only gotten half a night's sleep showed the most activity in brain regions tied to fear and the least activity in areas associated with control of emotion."

Surprisingly, people who got no sleep lacked brain activation in fear-related areas during fear conditioning and extinction. During the extinction recall 12 hours later, their brain activity looked more alike to those with normal sleep, suggesting that a limited night of sleep may be worse than none at all.



Source-Medindia