Posts: General / Overnight Therapy? The Role of Sleep in Emotional Brain Processing.

I have been extremely sleep deprived lately, so I figured I'd share this paper with you:



Overnight Therapy? The Role of Sleep in Emotional Brain Processing. which gives a good overview of the role of sleep in emotional processing and mood disorders.



One of the most intruiging findings in clinical research has been the phenomenon that sleep deprivation is an extremely effective treatment for depression.  Take a severely depressed patient and deprive them of sleep for a few nights, and suddenly they are laughing, making jokes, etc.   Why? Nobody knows for sure, but it does suggest that the mechanisms for depression are reinforced nightly.   Although I would personally suggest that sleep deprivation might lead to an inability for thalamic body regulation, thereby inducing a state of cognitive 'drunkeness'. 



I'm looking for some personal anecdotes in this thread. What types of things do you notice in your own behaviour when you are sleep deprived?   I have noticed that I tend to speak my thoughts out loud sporadically and unintentially when I am severely lacking sleep. Similarly, I'm also more prone to laughing out loud, even when I'm by myself.   



Now, back to work! Going to be another all nighter.

When you state all-nighter do you liertally mean workin all night and not sleeping at all ?



Many of times I have worked to 3-4 in the morning to then had to walk up in at 7am. Sometimes to do more work or sometimes to go present the work I was working all night on. This scedule, which was what I did last semester with teaching a 8am classs, requires at lot of naps and even more caffinee.

  I'd imagine that caffinee or anything else your doing that has an effect on your sleep cycle or state of awakness would end up being a potential confuoding factor to this conclusion.

Only a handful of times in my life have I worked all night and went straight into work. Although back in my twenties I used to party all night and then drive into work, get dressed in the car, and work the lunch shift,  then go home and sleep till my dinner shift then go out that night again and do it all over.

I do sometimes feel good after a day of working and not sleeping, however I don't know fi it's the not sleeping per se that is putting me in a good mood or the fact that I worked all night so I got a lot done and I feel good about that. On the other hand, too much sleep makes me feel terrible. I much perfer to be on too little sleep then too much.