Sleep Debt
Podcast (Dr J Moch)
Listen to "Sleep debt " from Jonathan D Moch on Anchor: https://anchor.fm/jonathan424/episodes/ep-e1g7ip/Sleep-debt-a3i9up
Video.
We start this lecture on Sleep debt by watching and learning from this ted.com video.
https://ted.com/talks/claudia_aguirre_what_would_h...
Key Ideas.
Eleven current research findings about the affects sleep debt has on brain health.
1). Memory: the hippocampus encodes new memories whilst awake, and these memories can be replayed whilst asleep, and embedded in long term memory systems. Lose regular sleep, lose long term memories. You schnooze, you win!!
2). Emotions: the amygdala is a vital component of the emotional networks. The amygdala is sensitive to threats and thus is a key point for stress response activation. The prefrontal cortex controls, via thoughts, the response of the amygdala (Emotions). The circuits between the two (prefrontal cortex and amygdala) are fully developed by mid-twenties. The connections are supersensitive to sleep deprivation. It is clear that lack of sleep disrupts this connection and is the reason why we get irritable, angry, and pick fights easier when tired.
3). Divergent thinking: lateral and creative thinking are vital for problem solving. The ability to switch internal commentary is energy dependent. Lack of sleep decreases activity in lower parts of the frontal cortex, thus limiting the potential of rapid decision-making.
4). Misinformation: Sleep deprived brains struggle to encode memories, and may include false memories of events.
5). Brain shrinkage: some brain imaging studies link longterm sleep debt to loss of volume in lobes of brain, especially the frontal, temporal and parietal regions.
6). Cluttered speech: the temporal lobes are intimately involved in speech formation and delivery. In well-rested people these networks are highly active, but are lowered significantly in sleep deprived subjects.
7). Hunger: tiredness decreases prefrontal cortical activity (decision-making, consequential strategy and judgement), and increases amygdala function (emotion of desire). The ideal brain state combination to consume sugar-coated junk food. Long Term Result: insulin hypersensitivity, pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, obesity and inflammatory-induced diseases.
8). Sensory overload: healthy sleep allows a person to filter information from all five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Sleep deprivation deactivates these filtering mechanisms resulting in hallucinations; seeing things that are not there, hearing sounds that are not apparent to others….
9). Attention deficit: sleep deprivation confuses visual sensory processing, leading to profound disengagement with the world. Even though, 50% of the time most of us tune out and daydream, this is much worse if one did not sleep the night before.
10). Risk aversion: psychological reasoning about win and loss is disturbed in sleep deprivation. Heathy sleepers have better decision-making and fear loss more acutely than the sleep-deprived, who cannot care less about losses. Beware the all night casino player!
11). Brain damage: long term sleep deprivation kills brain cells, especially the brain stem, which can be irreparable. Weekend catching up on sleep sleep debt is maybe too late!
Get it?
Link.
Study into sleep deprivation
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