Sleep Loss and the Socio-Emotional Brain

• Published in: Trends in cognitive sciences Vol. 24; no. 6; pp. 435 - 450
• Main Authors: Ben Simon, Eti, Vallat, Raphael, Barnes, Christopher M., Walker, Matthew P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.06.2020
• Subjects: Anxiety; Brain; emotional processing; Emotions; Humans; Loneliness; Sleep; Sleep Deprivation; social behavior; sleep; sleep deprivation; social behavior; emotional processing
• ISSN: 1364-6613; 1879-307X; 1879-307X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.02.003

Are you feeling emotionally fragile, moody, unpredictable, even ungenerous to those around you? Here, we review how and why these phenomena can occur as a result of insufficient sleep. Sleep loss disrupts a broad spectrum of affective processes, from basic emotional operations (e.g., recognition, responsivity, expression), through to high-order, complex socio-emotional functioning (e.g., loneliness, helping behavior, abusive behavior, and charisma). Translational insights further emerge regarding the pervasive link between sleep disturbance and psychiatric conditions, including anxiety, depression, and suicidality. More generally, such findings raise concerns regarding society’s mental (ill)health and the prevalence of insufficient and disrupted sleep. Sleep loss amplifies basic emotional reactivity, increasing negative mood states (e.g., anxiety, depression, suicidality), yet impairing the accurate recognition and outward expression of emotions.Inadequate sleep further impacts higher-order, complex socio-emotional functioning, decreasing prosocial behaviors, increasing social withdrawal, triggering marital and workplace conflict, and enfeebling leadership skills.The emotional dysfunction experienced by sleep-deprived individuals, such as loneliness or lack of work motivation, can be ‘transmitted’ to well-rested others who come in contact with an under-slept individual, reflecting viral contagion.The underlying neural mechanisms include a loss of top-down prefrontal regulation of amygdala, aberrant cortical processing in the salience network, including insula and cingulate cortex, and sympathovagal changes in the body.