Feel rattled and anxious after a night of poor sleep? According to new findings, sleep deprivation can trigger the brain's deep emotional centers, leading to anxiety -- and this is especially true if you are already a nervous person.
"What this study highlights is the importance of sleep for healthy emotional functioning," said Andrea Goldstein, who did the research at the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. "And people who are highly anxious may actually be more vulnerable."
The findings -- the first reportedly to explore the link between sleep deprivation and anticipatory reactivity -- will be presented at this week's sleep conference SLEEP 2012 in Boston.
In the study, the researchers used brain scanning on 18 healthy adults in two separate sessions, one after a normal night's sleep and a second after a night of sleep deprivation. During both sessions, participants were exposed to an emotional task that involved a period of anticipating a potentially negative experience.
For those sleep-deprived subjects, the scans showed the lack of shut-eye "significantly amplified the build-up of anticipatory activity in deep emotional brain centers," especially in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is associated with responding to negative and unpleasant experiences. In some cases, sleep deprivation accounted for an increase in anticipatory reaction by more than 60 percent, especially for those subjects who were "naturally anxious."
"Anticipation is a fundamental brain process, a common survival mechanism across numerous species," says Goldstein. "Our results suggest that just one night of sleep loss significantly alters the optimal functioning of this essential brain process, especially among anxious individuals."
Sleep-deprived people are also more likely to make poorer food choices than their better rested counterparts, according to new research from the same university, also presented at this week's conference.