Waking up regularly at night can be worse than no sleep

People have been paying attention to the disadvantages of chronic sleep deprivation. But a recent study published in Biological Psychiatry looked at another form of sleep problem: shifts, shifts, interruptions in sleep (as many health workers can only go to bed in the middle of the night/after bed).

Studies have found that long-term interruptions in sleep may result in people being unable to learn fear-related memories and are at higher risk of developing anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The sleep study, led by Dr. Anne Germain of the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Edward Pace-Schott of Harvard Medical School, was conducted in 150 healthy adults. They had one-third of the subjects sleep normally, one-third of the subjects interrupted sleep (only sleeping in the first half of the night), and one-third were sleepless (no sleep). Then in the morning, all the subjects underwent a fear regulation test.

In three fear models, they showed subjects three colors, two of which were paired with a mild electric shock, and one color was safe. The study tested the subjects' ability to respond to these three colors, looking at how well their brains learned about "threats."

The results show:

Brain activity in people whose sleep was interrupted was very different from the other two groups;

Of the three groups, only the sleep disruption group showed the most activity in the fear-related brain regions, while the areas associated with controlling emotions showed the least activity;

Those who could not sleep, brain activity after 12 hours was more similar to that of those who slept normally.

The study hypothesized that interrupting sleep leads to rapid eye movement sleep (REM) loss, which affects memory consolidation.

Dr. Pace-Schott thinks this could suggest that waking up in the middle of the night may be worse than no sleep. Health workers and soldiers are often interrupted from sleep instead of having insomnia all night. Our findings suggest that such populations may be particularly vulnerable to fear-related disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder."