“Rapid eye movement (REM or paradoxical) sleep is a unique and mysterious sleep state during which most of the dreams occur together with intense emotional content. How and why these emotions are reactivated is unclear. The prefrontal cortex integrates many of these emotions during wakefulness but appears paradoxically quiescent during REM sleep. "Our goal was to understand the underlying mechanism and the functions of such a surprising phenomenon," says Prof. Antoine Adamantidis from the Department of Biomedical Research (DBMR) at the University of Bern and the Department of Neurology at the Inselspital, University Hospital of Bern.

Processing emotions, particularly distinguishing between danger and safety, is critical for the survival of animals. In humans, excessively negative emotions, such as fear reactions and states of anxiety, lead to pathological states like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). In Europe, roughly 15% of the population is affected by persistent anxiety and severe mental illness. The research group headed by Antoine Adamantidis is now providing insights into how the brain helps to reinforce positive emotions and weaken strongly negative or traumatic emotions during REM sleep. This study was published in the journal Science.

These findings pave the way to a better understanding of the processing of emotions during sleep in humans and open new perspectives for therapeutic targets to treat maladaptive processing of traumatic memories, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) and their early sleep-dependent consolidation. Additional acute or chronic mental health issues that may implicate this somatodendritic decoupling during sleep include acute and chronic stress, anxiety, depression, panic, or even anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. Sleep research and sleep medicine have long been a research focus of the University of Bern and the Inselspital, Bern University Hospital. "We hope that our findings will not only be of interest to the patients, but also to the broad public," says Adamantidis.”

My Takeaways From This Article

1. In a research done by the University of Bern the connection between dreaming and emotive states were looked into as the connection between dreaming and mental states are currently not studied as well and poorly understood. However as previous studies have posited the important relationship between sleep and mental health it’s worthwhile to look into the effects of dreaming in emotion management.

2. The study found that dreaming particularly in the REM stage of sleep showed signs of better emotional management particularly through the observation of neuronal firing which is able to more effectively process and discriminate between safe and danger stimuli.

3. This study has bigger implications in terms of potentially finding new ways to assist sufferers of mental health issues such as those with PTSD who often are defined by their difficulty in separating safe situations from dangerous ones. Additionally in general this study shows that there are strong connections between sleep and emotional processing therefore skipping on those hours may be more detrimental than previously thought.

Full article is here!

What are your takeaways from your article? What do you think about the connection between sleep and emotional health?

#Sleep #Emotions #MentalHealth