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. 2019 Mar 27;6(3):181704.
doi: 10.1098/rsos.181704. eCollection 2019 Mar.

Sleep restriction caused impaired emotional regulation without detectable brain activation changes-a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Sandra Tamm  1   2 , Gustav Nilsonne  1   2 , Johanna Schwarz  1   2 , Armita Golkar  1   3 , Göran Kecklund  1   2 , Predrag Petrovic  1 , Håkan Fischer  3 , Torbjörn Åkerstedt  1   2 , Mats Lekander  1   2
Affiliations

Sleep restriction caused impaired emotional regulation without detectable brain activation changes-a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Sandra Tamm et al. R Soc Open Sci. .

Abstract

Sleep restriction has been proposed to cause impaired emotional processing and emotional regulation by inhibiting top-down control from prefrontal cortex to amygdala. Intentional emotional regulation after sleep restriction has, however, never been studied using brain imaging. We aimed here to investigate the effect of partial sleep restriction on emotional regulation through cognitive reappraisal. Forty-seven young (age 20-30) and 33 older (age 65-75) participants (38/23 with complete data and successful sleep intervention) performed a cognitive reappraisal task during fMRI after a night of normal sleep and after restricted sleep (3 h). Emotional downregulation was associated with significantly increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (p FWE < 0.05) and lateral orbital cortex (p FWE < 0.05) in young, but not in older subjects. Sleep restriction was associated with a decrease in self-reported regulation success to negative stimuli (p < 0.01) and a trend towards perceiving all stimuli as less negative (p = 0.07) in young participants. No effects of sleep restriction on brain activity nor connectivity were found in either age group. In conclusion, our data do not support the idea of a prefrontal-amygdala disconnect after sleep restriction, and neural mechanisms underlying behavioural effects on emotional regulation after insufficient sleep require further investigation.

Keywords: emotional regulation; fMRI; reappraisal; sleep.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Inclusion flowchart.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Experimental task. Stimuli were shown for 5 s following 2 s of instruction (arrow). After stimuli, a blank screen was shown for 2 s, and after that participants were asked to rate how well they succeeded with the task on a 7-point scale. A cursor was initially placed on ‘4’. Note: The stimuli shown in this figure are not IAPS pictures and were not included in the task.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Main effect of the contrast negative > neutral for the maintain instruction. (a) Negative > neutral, all participants. (b) Negative > neutral, young participants. (c) Negative > neutral, older participants. (d) Negative > neutral, all participants. Stimuli modelled with a duration of 0 s.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Downregulate > maintain for negative pictures (a) All participants. (b) Our data (in red), regions of interest from Kalish meta-analysis indicated in blue. (c) Downregulate > maintain, young participants. (d) Downregulate > maintain, older participants.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Upregulate > maintain. (a) All. (b) Young. (c) Older.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
(a) Rated success in following the instructions. Younger and older participants behaved quite differently in the scanner. In young participants, sleep restriction caused a significant decrease in rated success for maintain neutral, downregulate and upregulate negative. Dots represent means and vertical lines 95% CI. (b) Rated unpleasantness. In younger participants, sleep restriction caused a borderline significant effect on ratings of unpleasantness in a subsample.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
(a) Connectivity from left amygdala that increases for negative compared to neutral pictures. (b) Connectivity from right amygdala that increases for negative compared to neutral pictures.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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