Sleep Helps Process Our Emotion and Researchers of a New Study Tell Us How

A new study has recently expanded the essentiality of sleep in mental health and opened new ways of treatment strategies.

A Devdiscourse report specified that scientists, specifically the Department of Neurology of the University of Bern and University Hospital Bern have discovered how sleep is helping with the processing of emotions.

Rapid eye movement, or REM or paradoxical sleep is an unusual and mysterious state of sleep during which most of the dreams are happening together with strong emotional content.

The manner and reason such emotions are reactivation are not clear. More so, the prefrontal cortex incorporates many of these emotions during wakefulness although it appears paradoxically quiescent during REM sleep.

Sleep and PTSD

According to Professor Antoine Adamantidis, from the Department of Biomedical Research at the University of Bern and the Department of Neurology at the Inselspital, University Hospital of Bern, their objective was to understand the underlying mechanism, as well as the "functions of such a surprising phenomenon."

Processing emotions, specifically determining between danger and safety, is crucial for the animals' survival. In humans, overly negative emotions like fear reactions, as well as states of anxiety, result in pathological states such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders or PTSD.

In Europe, approximately 15 percent of the population is affected by persevering anxiety and severe mental illness.

The research team led by Adamantidis is now offering insights into how the brain is helping strengthen positive emotions and weakening intensely adverse or traumatic emotions during REM sleep.

Emotional Memories Transformed During REM Sleep

In their study published in the Science journal, the authors first conditioned mice to recognize auditory stimuli linked to safety and others linked to danger, or aversive stimuli.

The activity of neurons in the mice's brain was then documented during sleep-wake cycles. In this manner, the study authors were able to map different areas of a cell and determine the manner emotional memories are transformed during REM sleep.

Essentially, neurons are composed of soma or a cell body that incorporates information coming from the dendrites or inputs and deliver signals to other neurons via their outputs or axons.

The results acquired revealed that cell somas are kept silent while their dendrites are activated. This means, explained Adamantidis, "a decoupling of the two cellular compartments," in other words, soma wide asleep and dendrites wide awake.

Such decoupling is essential since the strong activity of the dendrites enables the encoding of both danger and safety emotions, while the inhibitions of the soma completely block the circuit's output during REM sleep.

Meaning, that the brain is favoring the discrimination of safety against danger in the detrites, although blocking the overreaction of emotion, in specific danger.

Bi-Directional Mechanism

In a similar News-Medical.net report, it was indicated that according to the research team, the coexistence of both mechanisms is advantageous to the stability, as well as the survival of the organisms.

The study's first author Mattia Aime, from the DBMR, said "this bi-directional mechanism is vital to optimize" the discrimination between safe and dangerous signals.

If such discrimination is lacking in humans and excessive fear reactions are produced, this can result in anxiety disorders.

Such findings are specifically relevant to pathological conditions like PTSD, in which trauma is over-consolidated in the prefrontal cortex, every day during sleep.

Related information about the link between sleep and mental health is shown on Psych Hub's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Sleep and Mental Health in Science Times.