What Is Sleep Deprivation Therapy? Is It Really Effective in Treating Depression?

A person is said to have sleep deprivation when they are not sleeping enough or they are not getting good, quality sleep. When sleep deprivation is severe or happens over an extended period, it can cause very disruptive symptoms, which can interfere with a person's routine activities. In a recent study, however, it was suggested that sleeplessness may be a temporary mood booster.

Exploring the Effect of Sleep Deprivation

It is widely known that sleep deprivation negatively affects the mood and well-being of billions of people worldwide. However, specific individuals also experience rapid and significant positive mood enhancement after a period of sleep deprivation.

To find out why this happens, a team of researchers looked at how certain parts of the brain are affected by sleep deprivation in people with and without depression. They mapped brain activity in specific regions using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS fMRI). The result of their study is discussed in the paper "Enhanced amygdala-cingulate connectivity associates with better mood in both healthy and depressive individuals after sleep deprivation."

Led by Ya Chai from the University of Pennsylvania, the researchers focused on the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in controlling emotions, and the dorsal nexus (DN), which plays a vital role in regulating mood for people with depression. Using RS fMRI enabled scientists to observe how different brain regions are connected while people are resting.

Chai and colleagues compared the brain activity of healthy adults and people with major depressive disorder after a night of total sleep deprivation. The brain scans revealed that lack of sleep increased the connectivity between the amygdala and the DN in healthy participants.

The research demonstrates that a single night of total sleep deprivation strengthens the connectivity between the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the region of the brain linked with enhanced mood in both individuals with and without depression. This suggests that the connection between the amygdala and ACC is crucial for regulating mood in both healthy people and those with depression.

Vascular neurologist Dr. Atif Zafar from St. Michael's Hospital in Unity Health Toronto pointed to a previous study that suggests that there is also an association between cortisol levels that affect this amygdala-ACC pathway. Since sleep deprivation leads to increased body stress that raises blood levels of cortisol, it may have enhanced the connectivity depicted by fMRI.

Short-Term Benefits of Sleep Deprivation

Dr. Zafar believes that the potential of amygdala-ACC connectivity could be an area of future research in mood disorders. It could be a targeted therapy that might help find cures for a small subset of people suffering from mood disorders.

According to James Giordano, professor of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical Center, anecdotal evidence and several research studies have supported the notion that short-term sleep deprivation has the potential to improve clinical signs and subjective symptoms of depression. However, this study is the first to demonstrate, using state-of-the-art neural imaging, that a night of total sleep deprivation induces changes in connectivity between ACC and regions of the amygdala.