Research Hit: Poor Sleep Impedes Brain Control

Brain scanning shows sleep deprivation inhibits control of suppressing unwanted memories

You’ve written previously on how sleep is important for just about everything, haven’t you?

Yes, indeed. Sleep is the time when the brain processes the day’s inputs, consolidates memories, works though emotions, clears up DNA damage, and detoxifies the brain, so it’s pretty important!

This research recently published looks specifically at sleep quality and intrusive memories. This has implications for mental health but also for general life and in performing in business.

And what did the researchers find?

Marcus Harrington and colleagues of the University of East Anglia in England wanted to find the precise mechanisms and therefore recruited 85 people to undergo sleep lab testing and subsequent memory tasks combined with brain scanning.

Participants did the same tasks after a restful night’s sleep and after a night of sleep deprivation — so pretty extreme.

When engaging with the memory task and trying to suppress memories those that had been sleep deprived struggled to do this. This shows that sleep deprivation limits the ability of the brain to manage and control…