MMy usual way of writing term papers during college involved staying up all night, and I remember feeling happy and giggly as the sun came up. I also felt very focused and sociable, which led to bonding with my fellow all-nighters. After handing in our papers, we would go out for pancakes before I went home to sleep it off.
I had always wondered why I, and some of my classmates, felt so elated and silly after staying up all night, while others felt tired and grumpy. It seemed illogical that I would feel so open and cheerful after skipping sleep, especially since I struggle with depression.
One night of total lack of sleep can temporarily boost mood in some people.
But it turns out this contradiction has been studied for at least two hundred years. In 1818, University of Leipzig psychiatrist Johann Christian August Heinroth was reportedly the first to suggest that not getting enough sleep could temporarily help with “melancholia,” or depression as it was known then. He found this to be true for around 60 percent of patients. More than a hundred years later, in the 1970s, evidence emerged that readjusting disturbed circadian rhythms could improve the moods of depressed patients after a sleepless night. And more recently, researchers have suggested that a neurotransmitter called dopamine and neuroplasticity, which is the nervous system’s ability to reorganize itself in response to stimuli, may be involved in this effect, but the exact neural mechanisms remain unclear. suggest Last summer, Philip Gehrman, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and his colleagues, published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that further supports this phenomenon and suggests that closer connections between certain brain regions may play a role. The researchers found that one night of total sleep deprivation can temporarily improve mood in some healthy and depressed individuals, and these individuals show increased connectivity between the amygdala, which processes emotion and memory, and the anterior cingulate cortex, which is responsible for decision making and learning. emerged Gehrman cautioned that none of us, especially those dealing with depression, should try to self-medicate by staying up all night. However, he believes that his findings could help scientists identify other treatments for depression, which is very challenging to address. “What our results suggest is that therapeutic sleep deprivation may directly target these circuits,” explains Gehrman. “If we can find a way to target those circuits in ways other than with sleep deprivation, it may be possible to develop treatments for depression that are both rapid but more sustained than sleep deprivation.” have found According to Gehrman, a possible treatment for mood control involves using transcranial magnetic stimulation, which sends magnetic waves from outside the skull to stimulate nerve cells in the brain. However, it is difficult to use because the magnetic waves need to hit specific areas of the brain. Gehrman suggests that circuits responsive to sleep deprivation could be potential targets for magnetic stimulation, but this needs to be tested in clinical trials first.
Gehrman and his team studied 30 people with major depressive disorder during sleep deprivation, and also observed 54 people without depression, 16 of whom slept normally and served as controls. Over five days, they conducted three resting-state-functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS fMRI) scans on all participants to track brain blood oxygen delivery. study in the Both the sleep-deprived depressed and healthy groups underwent an fMRI scan after a normal night’s sleep, then after a night of sleep deprivation, and finally after two subsequent nights of normal sleep. The 16 non-depressed control subjects also went through the same series of scans but slept normally all four nights. Participants completed mood assessments every two hours while awake throughout the study period. Less than half of the depressed participants reported improved mood after staying awake all night, while most non-depressed individuals said their moods worsened. Stanford neurologist Robert Sapolsky, who has researched depression and sleep, expressed surprise at the results of Gehrman's and other studies, as prolonged stressors like sleep deprivation typically lead to depression.
Robert Sapolsky
, a Stanford neurologist who has studied depression and sleep, admitted in an email that he found the results of Gehrman's and other studies to be completely unexpected, as chronic stressors like sleep deprivation usually contribute to depression.
Sapolsky finds the idea hard to ignore, stating that it is well-supported and replicated. He believes that the key is understanding why only certain people benefit from the therapy and that this understanding represents real progress.
Gehrman admitted that the mystery of why some people benefit from therapeutic sleep deprivation while others do not has puzzled researchers for a long time.
Gehrman mentioned that researchers have been unable to identify consistent patterns that differentiate those who benefit from therapeutic sleep deprivation from those who do not. He also mentioned that it's unclear whether increased connectivity between brain regions leads to improved mood, or if improved mood leads to these circuit-level changes. Gehrman and his colleagues believe that neuroplasticity likely plays a role in any case. While I write this very early in the morning, I'm quite happy about Gehrman's discoveries—and about the sunrise.Lead image: PODIS / Shutterstock
For certain people, staying awake all night leads to positive changes in mood in the brain.
Gehrman acknowledged that what separates those for whom therapeutic sleep deprivation is effective and those who just get cranky and want to go to sleep is a mystery as old as Heinroth’s first observations of the effect.
“A number of people have tried to figure out what is different between ‘responders’ and ‘non-responders’ but no convincing patterns have been found yet,” he told me. Even with their own findings, it’s difficult to know which comes first—higher connectivity between the two brain regions, or improved mood. “We focused on the circuit-level changes, but those changes may have occurred because of underlying changes in dopamine activity,” Gehrman says. Either way, he and his colleagues believe that neuroplasticity likely has something to do with it.
As I type this in the wee hours before sunrise, I’m feeling pretty good about Gehrman’s findings—and about the sun coming up.
Lead image: PODIS / Shutterstock
