Poor sleep may hamper the ability to see things in positive light, especially in people suffering from depression and anxiety, researchers including one of Indian origin have found.
Researchers from University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in the US, used functional MRI to measure the activity in different regions of the brain as subjects were challenged with an emotion-regulation task.
They studied about 78 patients, 18 to 65 years of age, who had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, a major depressive disorder, or both.
The participants were given a questionnaire to assess their sleep over the previous month.Researchers, including Anand Kumar from University of Illinois at Chicago, found that participants who reported poorer sleep on the questionnaire were seen to have less brain activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex during the reappraisal (DACC) task, while those with lower sleep efficiency based on the actigraph data had higher activity in the DACC.
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, researchers 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,” she said.
The study was published in the journal Depression and Anxiety.
