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Sleep Deprivation Messes with Emotions. Thanks A Lot, Neanderthals.

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sleep deprivation cavemanLiveScience is reporting that sleep-deprivation allows our brains to overreact to bad experience.

“While we predicted that the emotional centers of the brain would overreact after sleep deprivation, we didn’t predict they’d overreact as much as they did,” Walker said. “They became more than 60 percent more reactive to negative emotional stimuli. That’s a whopping increase—the emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok.”

Apparently this absurd response is a more primitive reaction to sleep loss. This makes sense to me. A caveman out hunting mammoth until 4 AM is bound to be a little cranky when he comes home to find his wife ate the last of the rat-n-snake stew. Or he wakes up the next morning only to learn that local Neanderthal vandals chipped away at his wheel in the early morning. Argh! If only our caveman had gotten a little more sleep…

“When we’re sleep deprived, it’s really as if the brain is reverting to more primitive behavior, regressing in terms of the control humans normally have over their emotions,” researcher Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, told LiveScience.

Photo by cote.

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  • http://confluey.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default Elle Rayne

    Makes sense, especially thinking of my own experiences…and that pic is SCARY.

  • http://www.proveninsomniacure.info/3621/sleep-deprivation-messes-with-emotions-thanks-a-lot-neanderthals/ www.proveninsomniacure.info » Sleep Deprivation Messes with Emotions. Thanks A Lot, Neanderthals.

    [...] glen placed an interesting blog post on Sleep Deprivation Messes with Emotions. Thanks A Lot, Neanderthals..Here’s a brief overview:“While we predicted that the emotional centers of the brain would overreact after sleep deprivation, we didn’t predict they’d overreact as much as they did,” Walker said. “They became more than 60 percent more reactive to negative … [...]

  • http://sty.net sty

    dont know where to put this message, dont see contact/feedback info. getting this error when trying to access the ‘tools’ section

    Couldn’t write to: /home/lifedev/public_html/tools/wp-content/cache/wp-cache-a1193728e2cb1aae91b2caecd58873d7.html

  • http://www.stephanmiller.com Stephan Miller

    I can attest to this with some of the posts I have made while tired and angry.
    The question is whether to go back an edit them or let them stand.

  • http://www.alexshalman.com/blog/2007/11/11/sundays-speedlinking-11-11-07/ Sunday’s Speedlinking 11-11-07 | Alex Shalman . com

    [...] Charles Q. Choi over at LiveScience covers some research on how Emotions Run Amok in Sleep-Deprived Brains. So, if you’re constantly depriving yourself of sleep, perhaps this would be a good time to catch some extra Zzz. [found via LifeDev [...]

  • http://sleep-1.com Sleep Deprived

    I sure notice that I lose my mental edge when I get sleep deprived. My mind seems to turn to mush!

  • http://www.sleepys.com sleep

    Interesting.

  • http://www.checkcity.com/ paydayloans

    The story about the cave man was so creative! I loved it! It is really true that we need our sleep in order to function right. I read once in a magazine that after certain our without sleep your brain reacts the same as if you have had a certain amount of alcoholic beverage.

  • http://www.checkcity.com/ paydayloans

    The story about the cave man was so creative! I loved it! It is really true that we need our sleep in order to function right. I read once in a magazine that after certain our without sleep your brain reacts the same as if you have had a certain amount of alcoholic beverage.