Related Experiment Videos
Subjective and objective sleep quality modulate emotion regulatory brain function in anxiety and depression
Heide Klumpp1,2, Julia Roberts1, Mary C Kapella3
1Mood and Anxiety Disorders Research Program, Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Depression and Anxiety
|April 19, 2017
Summary
Poor sleep quality in anxiety and depression patients affects emotion regulation. Subjective sleep issues correlated with lower dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (DACC) activation, while objective measures linked poor sleep efficiency to increased DACC activity, impacting cognitive reappraisal.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Sleep Medicine
Background:
- Emotion regulation and sleep disturbances are common in anxiety and mood disorders.
- Poor sleep can impair cognitive functions crucial for emotional regulation.
- The impact of sleep quality on regulatory mechanisms in clinical anxiety and depression remains unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between sleep quality and emotion regulation neural mechanisms in patients with anxiety and/or mood disorders.
- To determine if subjective and objective sleep measures differentially impact brain activity during emotion regulation.
Main Methods:
- fMRI was used to assess brain activity during an emotion regulation task (reappraisal) in 78 patients.
- Sleep quality was measured using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) for subjective assessment and actigraphy for objective data.
- Regression analyses examined the association between sleep variables (PSQI, actigraphy efficiency, duration, wake-after-sleep-onset) and brain activation, controlling for diagnosis.
Main Results:
- Most patients reported problematic sleep, but subjective (PSQI) and objective (actigraphy) measures were uncorrelated.
- Worse self-reported sleep correlated with reduced dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (DACC) activation during reappraisal.
- Lower objective sleep efficiency positively correlated with increased DACC activation, and these sleep measures predicted DACC activity, not symptom severity.
Conclusions:
- Individual differences in perceived and objective sleep quality differentially modulate DACC activity during cognitive reappraisal.
- Neural correlates of emotion regulation are influenced by distinct aspects of sleep experience.
- Sleep disturbances may contribute to emotion dysregulation in anxiety and depressive disorders.