Overnight Therapy? The Role of Sleep in Emotional Brain Processing

By Els van der Helm, Matthew P. Walker. Psychological bulletin, 2009

1,029 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Cognitive neuroscience continues to build meaningful connections between affective behavior and human brain function. Within the biological sciences, a similar renaissance has taken place, focusing on the role of sleep in various neurocognitive processes, and most recently, the interaction between sleep and emotional regulation. In this review, we survey an array of diverse findings across basic and clinical research domains, resulting in a convergent view of sleep-dependent emotional brain processing. Based on the unique neurobiology of sleep, we outline a model describing the overnight modulation of affective neural systems and the (re)processing of recent emotional experiences, both of which appear to redress the appropriate next-day reactivity of limbic and associated autonomic networks. Furthermore, a REM sleep hypothesis of emotional-memory processing is proposed, the implications of which may provide brain-based insights into the association between sleep abnormalities and the initiation and maintenance of mood disturbances.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/20a2763cd21048da3e6fdc8567e5f5bfd6b11c24

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Citations in the corpus

The brain basis of emotion: A meta-analytic review (2012, background): “…et al. 1992) or sleep deprivation (Van der Helm et al. 2010; Yoo et al. 2007), in which critical brain regions and/or their connections are functionally altered (over-activated or deactivated), emotion generation is preserved, although subjective emotional experience can be modulated (Walker 2009).”
Sleep’s Role in the Consolidation of Emotional Episodic Memories (2010, positive): “Similarly, others have demonstrated that a full night of sleep preferentially improves memory accuracy for recognition of negatively arousing pictures relevant to an equivalent period of daytime wakefulness (reviewed in Walker, 2009).”
The effects of physical activity on sleep: a meta-analytic review (2015, background): “Research also suggests that slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep may be especially important for memory consolidation (Diekelmann & Born, 2010; Peigneux et al., 2004) and rapid eye movement sleep additionally important for emotional memory processing (Walker & van der Helm, 2009).”
Sleep and emotion regulation: An organizing, integrative review. (2017, background): “According to the “sleep to forget, sleep to remember” model [5], REM sleep periods both strengthen the declarative component of emotional experiences via activation of the same emotion-related brain structures and attenuate their affective tone via inhibition of aminergic neurotransmitters, resultin”
Dealing with sleep problems during home confinement due to the COVID‐19 outbreak: Practical recommendations from a task force of the European CBT‐I Academy (2020, background): “Sleep is an important factor regulating behaviour and emotions (Simon et al., 2015; Walker & Van Der Helm, 2009).”