Whatever You Do, Don't Sleep on It

Scientists already knew that sleep plays a very important role in the development of memories, so three researchers affiliated with the Department of Adult Mental Health, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan, carried out a study focusing on the link between sleep deprivation and eliminating fear generalization.

Kenichi Kuriyama, Takahiro Soshi, and Yoshiharu Kim conducted an experiment that was meant to determine whether sleep deprivation after a negative experience, could eliminate the associated fear – since there would be no memory consolidation which normally occurs during sleep.

They showed healthy volunteers videos of safe driving and of unexpected motor vehicle accidents, and then deprived of sleep half of them, while the others slept normally.

When the participants were tested later on, the researchers found that sleep deprivation eliminated the fear-associated memories through both fear recognition and physiological fear reactions, which means that it could be a possible therapy for individuals with PTSD or other anxiety disorders.

According to the general belief, sleep is a healing process that removes the stress of the day, and prepares us mentally to face the next day's challenges.

But memories associated with fear are an important part of anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Sleep deprivation after exposure to a traumatic event, whether intentional or not, may help prevent PTSD,” explained Dr. Kenichi Kuriyama, corresponding author of the study.

“Our findings may help to clarify the functional role of acute insomnia and to develop a prophylactic strategy of sleep restriction for prevention of PTSD.”

John Krystal, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry and Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at Yale University, said that “it would be nice if the benefits of sleep deprivation upon fear learning could be produced more easily for survivors of extreme stress.

“New insights into the neurobiology of sleep dependent learning may make it possible for these people to take a medication that disrupts this process while leaving restorative elements of sleep intact.”

The results of this research suggest that sleep deprivation is a promising pathway for a possible treatment and prevention of PTSD, but further research is needed.