Summary: Sleep plays an important role in being able to regulate negative emotions, especially in people with depression and anxiety, a new study reveals.

Source: University of Illinois at Chicago.

A lack of sleep makes everything harder. Focusing, finishing assignments, and coping with everyday stress can become monumental tasks.

People with anxiety and depression often have sleep problems. But little has been known about whether or how their poor sleep affects a specific region of the brain known to be involved in regulating negative emotional responses.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have found that this area of the brain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, may have to work harder to modify negative emotional responses in people with poor sleep who have depression or anxiety. The finding is reported in the journal Depression and Anxiety.

The research team, led by Heide Klumpp, assistant professor of psychiatry at UIC, used functional MRI to measure the activity in different regions of the brain as subjects were challenged with an emotion-regulation task. Participants were shown disturbing images of violence — from war or accidents — and were asked to simply look at the images and not to try to control their reaction or to “reappraise” what they saw in a more positive light.

An example of reappraisal would be to see an image of a woman with a badly bruised face and imagine her as an actress in makeup for a role, rather than as a survivor of violence, Klumpp said.

“Reappraisal is something that requires significant mental energy,” she said. “In people with depression or anxiety, reappraisal can be even more difficult, because these disorders are characterized by chronic negativity or negative rumination, which makes seeing the good in things difficult.”

The participants — 78 patients, 18 to 65 years of age, who had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, a major depressive disorder, or both — also completed a questionnaire to assess their sleep over the previous month. A motion-sensing device called an actigraph measured their awake time in bed, or “sleep efficiency,” over a six-day period. The questionnaire results indicated that three out of four participants met criteria for significant sleep disturbance, and the actigraph results suggested the majority had insomnia.

Participants who reported poorer sleep on the questionnaire were seen to have less brain activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex during the reappraisal task, while those with lower sleep efficiency based on the actigraph data had higher activity in the DACC.

“Because the questionnaire and actigraph measure different aspects of the sleep experience, it is not surprising that brain activity also differed between these measures,” said Klumpp. “The questionnaire asks about sleep over the previous month, and answers can be impacted by current mood. Plus, respondents may not be able to accurately remember how they slept a month ago. The actigraph objectively measures current sleep, so the results from both measurements may not match.”

“Higher DACC activity in participants with lower levels of sleep efficiency could mean the DACC is working harder to carry out the demanding work of reappraisal,” Klumpp said.

“Our research indicates sleep might play an important role in the ability to regulate negative emotions in people who suffer from anxiety or depression.”

About this psychology research article

Co-authors on the study are Julia Roberts, Mary Kapella, Amy Kennedy, Dr. Anand Kumar and Dr. K. Luan Phan, all of UIC.

Funding: This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grants K23MH093679 and R01MH101497, a Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Award, a UIC Campus Research Board award, and UIC Center for Clinical and Translational Research grant UL1RR029879.

Source: Sharon Parmet – University of Illinois at Chicago

Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to Geoff B Hall and is in the public domain.

Original Research: Abstract for “Subjective and objective sleep quality modulate emotion regulatory brain function in anxiety and depression” by Heide Klumpp Ph.D., Julia Roberts B.S., Mary C. Kapella Ph.D., Amy E. Kennedy M.S.W., Anand Kumar M.D., and K. Luan Phan M.D. in Depression and Anxiety. Published online April 18 2017 doi:10.1002/da.22622

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]University of Illinois at Chicago “Poor Sleep When You’re Depressed or Anxious May Make it Harder to See Positives: Brain Views Immoral Acts As If They Are Impossible.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 18 April 2017.

<https://neurosciencenews.com/depression-sleep-positivity-6436/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]University of Illinois at Chicago (2017, April 18). Poor Sleep When You’re Depressed or Anxious May Make it Harder to See Positives: Brain Views Immoral Acts As If They Are Impossible. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved April 18, 2017 from https://neurosciencenews.com/depression-sleep-positivity-6436/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]University of Illinois at Chicago “Poor Sleep When You’re Depressed or Anxious May Make it Harder to See Positives: Brain Views Immoral Acts As If They Are Impossible.” https://neurosciencenews.com/depression-sleep-positivity-6436/ (accessed April 18, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]

Abstract

Subjective and objective sleep quality modulate emotion regulatory brain function in anxiety and depression

Background

Disturbances in emotion regulation and sleep are shared across anxiety and mood disorders. Poor sleep has been shown to impair cognitive processes which may undermine cognitive regulatory function. However, it remains unknown if sleep quality impacts regulatory mechanisms in clinical anxiety and depression.

Methods

During fMRI, 78 patients with social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and/or major depressive disorder completed a validated emotion regulation task, which involved reappraisal (i.e., decrease negative affect) as compared to viewing aversive images. Sleep quality was assessed with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and actigraphy, representing subjective and objective measures of sleep, respectively. Regression analysis was conducted with the PSQI and actigraphy sleep efficiency, duration, and wake-after sleep onset variables.

Results

PSQI and actigraphy measures indicated that the majority of patients experienced problematic sleep, however, subjective and objective sleep measures were uncorrelated. Whole-brain voxel-wise regression analysis, controlling for diagnosis, revealed worse self-reported sleep corresponded with less reappraise-related activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (DACC). The same analysis performed with actigraphy data showed less sleep efficiency positively corresponded with DACC activation. Post-hoc stepwise regression analysis showed these sleep measures predicted DACC activity whereas anxiety and depression symptoms did not.

Conclusions

Individual differences in self-perceived and objective sleep quality differentially modulated the DACC, which is implicated in cognitive reappraisal. Findings suggest neural correlates of emotion regulation tracks different aspects of the sleep experience. Results also indicate sleep disturbance may play a role in the emotion dysregulation observed in anxiety and depressive disorders.

“Subjective and objective sleep quality modulate emotion regulatory brain function in anxiety and depression” by Heide Klumpp Ph.D., Julia Roberts B.S., Mary C. Kapella Ph.D., Amy E. Kennedy M.S.W., Anand Kumar M.D., and K. Luan Phan M.D. in Depression and Anxiety. Published online April 18 2017 doi:10.1002/da.22622

Feel free to share this Neuroscience News.