The Effects of Sleep Manipulation on Emotional Processing and Mood.

Abstract

Sleep manipulations have often been used to attempt to reveal the role of sleep. Early research, however, has also implicated certain sleep manipulations including late partial sleep deprivation, and REM-deprivation as temporarily mood enhancing in depressed individuals. These initial findings have prompted the present three-paper dissertation to explore the potential impact that three distinct sleep manipulations, a homeostatic sleep delay challenge, slow-wave sleep disruption, and napping may have on mood and emotional processing. The first study will examine a three-hour sleep delay and the associated effects on mood disturbance, in a sample of healthy and depressed adults. The second study explores the impact of disrupting slow-wave sleep on an aspect of emotional processing, the recognition of positive and negative words, in healthy individuals and those with depression. Finally, the third study will investigate the potential benefits of napping on frustration tolerance and impulsive behavior in a sample of healthy adults. If our results indicate that sleep manipulation does indeed show positive effects on mood and emotional processing, this may help inform treatment strategies for psychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder, or help develop intervention approaches for vulnerable populations who have been shown to be prone to emotional dysregulation