Lack of sleep usually leaves one irritable and having difficulty concentrating. However, a new study suggests that it has a different effect among people with depression.
Sleep Deprivation Boosts Mood Among Depressed Individuals
A recent study has pinpointed the brain areas that become active when mood is improved by lack of sleep. According to study author Philip Gehrman, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, the findings expand knowledge regarding the "bizarre phenomenon" of mood-boosting sleep deprivation because the study covered persons with and without depression.
The findings support the effectiveness of wake therapy in treating depression, says Anna Wirz-Justice, a professor emerita at the Center for Chronobiology at the University Psychiatric Clinics Basel in Switzerland, who was not involved in the study. However, she notes that they do not necessarily suggest the development of novel treatments. Perhaps the reevaluation of the intervention as a cheap, effective antidepressant modality will result from this study, which sheds light on the mechanisms at play, Scientific American reported.
According to the survey results, 43% of people diagnosed with depression reported feeling better after a sleepless night. Most people who did not have depression, although not all of them, said that their mood was worse after losing sleep.
Two brain regions previously linked to depression and the consequences of sleep deprivation exhibited higher activity in imaging individuals who reported improved mood. The amygdala, one of these areas, is well known for its role in memory and emotion processing. The anterior cingulate cortex is the other; research has linked it to depression and the advantages of sleep deprivation. Unexpectedly, whether people experienced depression or not, activity in these two areas rose as their moods improved.
According to Francesco Benedetti, a longtime sleep disruption researcher at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan who was not involved in the work, the involvement of the anterior cingulate cortex "fits the picture" that these earlier studies have pieced together about depression and disrupted sleep.
The indicated relationship between the two areas suggests that they contribute to the improved mood that follows a restless night. Even after two nights of recovery sleep, the link remained in people who had depression.
According to Benedetti, lack of sleep may intensify the amygdala-quieting and mood-enhancing effects of brain structures in the higher region of the brain, such as the anterior cingulate cortex. Wirz-Justice added that it is an indication that people's moods have improved regardless of whether they have been diagnosed with depression is "an important clue" for determining how sleep deprivation works.
She added that studies like these are a "fabulous" method to research the causes of mood shifts without being hampered by drugs.
In 1976, German psychiatrist Burkhard Pflug suggested that sleep deprivation may act as a "zeitgeber," or "time giver," in depressed individuals and resynchronize abnormal brain rhythms. According to Benedetti's research, sleep deprivation may help rhythmic cycles that maintain brain function by re-energizing them when depression flattens them.
What is Wake Therapy?
Wake therapy is a novel approach to treating depression using the unanticipated advantages of sleep deprivation. Professor David Veale, a psychiatric expert, describes how a quick recovery can be achieved by remaining awake for 36 hours under carefully monitored circumstances, per BBC Science Focus.
It all began around 1967 when a woman in Germany told her physician that cycling through the night helped her with her depression. Later, they realized that sleep deprivation was more significant than exercise. The effects of sleep deprivation were then investigated; roughly half of those recovered, but between 80 and 90 percent relapsed. As a result, it didn't seem to be worthwhile.
Quite several studies and trials on sleep deprivation alone were conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, but they are now just mentioned in textbooks as "this is what happens if we do sleep deprivation." It was lost to memory. Only in the late 1990s and early 2000s did people begin investigating how to control this response.
Since then, there have been roughly 12 case series where practitioners have discussed their work with patients and three randomized control studies where practitioners have contrasted their interventions with a control group. According to them, roughly 50% of people recover, which aligns with what they have observed in their studies. So, wake therapy seems quite promising.
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