Anything short of an uninterrupted seven hours of sleep, and I'm a force to be reckoned with in the morning. The children have to tiptoe around me so as not to unleash my wrath, my husband hands me a cup of coffee before he utters a word that might trigger an unwarranted response, and I'm the personification of road rage as I head off to work. It seems that I'm not the only one that gets a little testy if they're deprived of their sleep. Scientists may have figured out why. According to a recent report by HealthDay News, a new study has revealed a correlation between lack of sleep and the brain's emotional center's inclination to overreact to negative experiences. "A shutdown of the prefrontal lobe - a brain region that normally keeps emotions under control - is the reason for heightened emotional response in sleep-deprived people, HealthDay gave as the explanation of the researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Berkeley. In the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Current Biology, the team reported that its study was the first to determine, at the neural level, why lack of sleep can lead to emotionally irrational behavior. They added that the research may contribute to improving the understanding of the link between sleep disruptions and psychiatric disorders. This adds to the critical list of sleep s benefits, Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley, said in a prepared statement. Sleep appears to restore our emotional brain circuits, and, in doing so, prepares us for the next day s challenges and social interactions. Most importantly, this study demonstrates the dangers of not sleeping enough. Sleep deprivation fractures the brain mechanisms that regulate key aspects of our mental health. The study included 26 healthy people who were assigned to either a normal sleep group or to a sleep deprivation group, where they were kept awake for 35 hours, HealthDay pointed out. After being deprived of their sleep, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure the participants brain activity. We had predicted a potential increase in the emotional reaction from the brain [in people deprived of sleep], but the size of the increase truly surprised us, Walker was reported to have said. 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, he added. Walker explained that it was as if the lack of sleep led the brain to revert back to a more primitive pattern of activity, becoming unable to put emotional experiences in context and produce controlled, appropriate responses. So for peace of mind, it might be better to tuck in earlier at night and catch a few more winks.
