Lack of sleep tampers with your emotions

No surprise to me.

I thought of the fact that sleep deprivation is a method of torture when I read about the homeless woman who ran onto a sidewalk had been not allowed to park her car where she could sleep. Another thought was to wonder if she fell asleep while driving.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-12/afot-los120815.php

Public Release: 8-Dec-2015
Lack of sleep tampers with your emotions
Tel Aviv University study pinpoints neural mechanism responsible for impaired neutrality due to sleep loss
American Friends of Tel Aviv University

Cranky or grumpy after a long night? Your brain's ability to regulate emotions is probably compromised by fatigue. This is bad news for 30 percent of American adults who get less than six hours of sleep per night, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A new Tel Aviv University study has identified the neurological mechanism responsible for disturbed emotion regulation and increased anxiety due to only one night's lack of sleep. The research reveals the changes sleep deprivation can impose on our ability to regulate emotions and allocate brain resources for cognitive processing.

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"It turns out we lose our neutrality. The ability of the brain to tell what's important is compromised. It's as if suddenly everything is important," she said.

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"These results reveal that, without sleep, the mere recognition of what is an emotional and what is a neutral event is disrupted. We may experience similar emotional provocations from all incoming events, even neutral ones, and lose our ability to sort out more or less important information. This can lead to biased cognitive processing and poor judgment as well as anxiety," said Prof. Hendler.

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