a sleep deprived person May not experience slowed speech , flattened emotional, impaired memory, ability to be novel or multitask
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How does a lack of sleep affect our brains? In contrast to the benefits of sleep, frameworks exploring the impact of sleep loss are relatively lacking. Importantly, the effects of sleep deprivation (SD) do not simply reflect the absence of sleep and the benefits attributed to it; rather, they reflect the consequences of several additional factors, including extended wakefulness. With a focus on neuroimaging studies, we review the consequences of SD on attention and working memory, positive and negative emotion, and hippocampal learning. We explore how this evidence informs our mechanistic understanding of the known changes in cognition and emotion associated with SD, and the insights it provides regarding clinical conditions associated with sleep disruption.
Without sleep, our cognitive and emotional abilities become markedly disrupted. What are the neural changes underlying these abnormalities? What do these alterations tell us about the pervasive link between sleep disruption and numerous neurological and psychiatric disorders?
There are at least three motivating reasons to build an accurate account of how sleep deprivation (SD) affects the human brain. First, from a neurobiological perspective, it is important to characterize which networks in the human brain are vulnerable or resilient to the effects of insufficient sleep and to understand how such SD-induced changes (such as regional or network increases or decreases in activity or changes in functional connectivity) explain the maladaptive changes in behaviour that are associated with SD. Of importance, SD does not simply represent the absence of sleep and the functions attributed to it. Rather, the sleep-deprived state is a composite of numerous detrimental factors, including extended wakefulness, as well as the absence of sleep. It is therefore insufficient only to develop an understanding of the functional benefits of sleep and then to reverse-infer an understanding of the neural and behavioural changes that would be expected following a lack thereof. Second, it is necessary to determine how comorbid sleep disruption — present in all major neurological and psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, Alzheimer disease, anxiety disorders and addiction disorders1,2 — contributes to or results from these disorders and may thus be a target for disease treatment and/or prevention. Third, from a societal standpoint, such scientific evidence informs debates regarding sleep recommendations for both public and professional health policies in light of the acknowledged sleep-loss epidemic that now pervades industrialized nations3.
This Review seeks to move closer to these goals. We provide a focused overview of the impact of SD on the human brain across five functional domains: attention; working memory; positive, reward-related affect; negative affect; and hippocampus-dependent memory. Drawing on neuroimaging studies, we explore the neural signatures underlying phenotypic changes in cognition and affect following experimental SD. Moreover, we present examples of how these findings afford mechanistic insights into clinical disorders associated with disturbed sleep. The Review is necessarily focused on acute (24–48-hour) SD unless otherwise specified, as most neuroimaging studies to date are restricted to these time frames....