Sleep has a huge impact on how individuals function each day. Getting too little or too much sleep each night can cause negative effects on the brain's ability to regulate emotions and other cognitive processes. This impacts a person further by putting them at a higher risk for developing issues with their mental health. Bipolar I and Bipolar II Disorders can be an example further understood and correlated with negative patterns in circadian rhythms.
The amygdala is the part of the brain that regulates emotions as well as processing memory. Any external factors that are seen as threats can cause a warning to be sent and received by the amygdala to produce a response to alert an individual of a stimulus. For the brain to process this information, the prefrontal cortex must work in conjunction with the amygdala. One of the jobs of the prefrontal cortex is to ensure the amygdala's stress response is controlled and emotional regulation is functioning effectively. If the connection between these two parts of teh brain is not working, issues will arise with controlling emotional responses. Impaired connections can be a result of sleep depreivation which makes the firing synapses between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala weaker. The weaker connections also contribute to failure in encoding memories within the amygdala.
In the research article, "Developmental emergence of sleep rhythms enables long-term memory capabilities in Drosophila", Dr. Cavanaugh and his colleagues investigated the role that circadian rhythms play in advancing fruit flies' cognitive abilities. There was a significant focus on the Dh44 neurons in this research and how they play an important role in regulating arousal. Dh44 neurons receive input about the internal clock and are more active when there are higher levels of calcium. DN1a clock neurons release the neuropeptide CCHa1 which binds to the receptor on Dh44 cells. If this receptor is removed, manipulation in the arousal cell can occur in the Dh44 neurons. Long term memory was tested in Drosophila with absence of CCHa1 receptor. The results showed that, in L3, the Dh44 neurons did not formulate LTM. The findings in Dr. Cavanaugh's research revealed that only due to rhythmic sleep, the brain can make deeper and stronger connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.
The research article, "Circadian Rhythm Alterations May be Related to Impaired Resilience, Emotional Dysregulation and to the Severity of Mood Features in Bipolar I and II Disorders", discussed Palagini and her colleagues' investigation in how changes in circadian rhythms can affect and possibly influence dysregulation of emotions indicating the progression of bipolar disorders in an individual. Through the process of measuring circadian rhythms, the results revealed that the participants with more disruptions in their sleeping patterns were experiencing feelings of depression, suicidal thoughts, and distress in processing emotions. This research found that bipolar disorder can be correlated with changes to circadian rhythms whether it has a negative or a positive impact o a person's mood. These results relate to Dr. Cavanaugh's work as sleep plays a key role in solidifying connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala to function properly in both regulating emotions and processing memory.
In the article, "Why Just One Sleepless Night Makes People Emotionally Fragile", the author describes how even one night of not acquiring enough sleep will cause a dramatic increasing in feelings of anxiety and depression the morning after. The unfortunate aspect of emotional dysregulation is that it can cause a person to sleep less. Therefore, this is a cycle of continued loss of sleep which puts an individual at a higher risk of experiencing mental health disorders. In this article, besides using himself as an example, Simon describes a study that he conducted, showing participants pictures of either a neutral or emotionally triggering scenery. As a result, the participants who were sleep deprived had a response to both images. This revealed that due to the lack of sleep, the prefrontal cortex's signals sent to the amygdala were significantly weaker. The participants who did not lose any sleep before the study only responded to the emotionally triggering photo. Again, through Simon's work, there is another heavy correlation with how circadian rhythms affect the brain's ability in processing of emotions.
References
Palagini L., Miniati M, Marazziti D, Massa L, Grassi L, Geoffroy PA. Circadian Rhythm Alterations May be Related to Impaired REsilience, Emotional Dysregulation and to the Severity of Mood Features in Bipolar I and II Disorders. Clin Neuropsychiatry. 2022 Jun;19(3):174-186. doi: 10.36131/cnfioritieditore20220306.
Simon, Eti Ben. "Why Just One Sleepless Night Makes People Emotionally Fragile." Scientific American, Scientific American, 15 Aug. 2023. www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-just-one-sleepless-night-makes-people-emotionally-fragile/.
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