12/30/2023 0 Comments Infographic on sleep![]() ![]() To take a peek inside the brain, Gehrman and his colleagues evaluated 30 people with major depressive disorder who all underwent sleep deprivation. “Perhaps this study, which provides clues to mechanisms, will lead to reevaluation of the intervention as an inexpensive, rapid antidepressant modality.” Because the research included people with and without depression, the findings broaden understanding about the “bizarre phenomenon” of mood-boosting sleep deprivation, says study author Philip Gehrman, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Įven without immediately leading to new therapies, the results confirm the benefit of wake therapy in 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 work. Identifying processes in the brain that underlie sleep-deprived boosting of mood could lead to therapies that are less burdensome than enduring a wakeful night.Ī new study published June 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA has identified specific brain regions that kick up activity when sleep deprivation lifts one’s mood. As anyone who has parented an infant can attest, that has unwanted “spillover” effects on other aspects of life. ![]() Sleep deprivation has disadvantages that include, well, going without sleep. The effects of this approach, dubbed “wake therapy,” offer the bonus of being immediate, unlike most antidepressants, which require a few weeks to work. Since then study after study has shown that spending a night without sleep, especially with lights on, indeed produces mood benefits for about half of the people with depression. Experimental trials in the 1970s went on to confirm a benefit. But it wasn’t until 1959 that formal reports began to emerge, again from Germany, suggesting that a night of sleeplessness could boost mood in depression. In 1818 Johann Christian August Heinroth, considered to have been the first professor of psychiatry at a university, suggested that sleep deprivation might alleviate “melancholia,” or depression. ![]()
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