Instant Genius - Why not getting enough sleep plays havoc with our emotions

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Many of us will have experienced changes in our emotional states after failing to get a good night’s sleep. Maybe we find that we lose our temper more easily or that we’re more likely to feel sad or upset. But what exactly is going on in our bodies and brains when we lack sleep that gives rise to these, often troubling, effects? In this episode, we’re joined by Dr Bogdan Matei, a medical psychiatrist and master trainer for the luxury bed brand Hästens. He tells us what happens in different areas of our brains when we don’t get enough sleep, how this affects our ability to regulate our emotions and shares some techniques we can use to mitigate the debilitating effects of sleep deprivation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Every Monday and Friday, you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus. Many of us will have experienced changes in our emotional states after failing to get a good night's sleep. Maybe we find that we lose our temper more easily, or that we're more likely to feel sad or upset. But what exactly is going on in our bodies and brains when we lack sleep

that gives rise to these often troubling effects? In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Bogdan Mate, a medical psychiatrist and master trainer for the luxury bed brand Hustens. He tells us what happens in different areas of our brains when we don't get enough sleep, how this affects our ability to regulate our emotions, and shares some techniques we can all use to mitigate the debilitating effects of sleep deprivation.

So it's a sort of first broad question. Let's have a look at what exactly the relationship between sleep and our ability to regulate our emotions is. It's a simple question and it has such a complex answer. You know, as a psychiatrist, one of my most daunting tasks and experience is I've accompanied my patients through is anhedonia, the blunting of emotional response. it's one of those experiences where life loses color, loses texture, loses taste. Everything is drained away and the person remains in this emotional and desert where there's nothing.

And getting out of the desert is one of the most humbling experiences. I had to go through myself. Why do you become a psychiatrist? This is the subject of another podcast and accompanied a lot of patients through this desert. Imagine a factory. And, you know, the alarm goes off and all the factory workers want to go to resolve the problem. They are focused. And the alarm does this to our nervous system.

You know, the cortisol rushing through our veins. you know, it focuses our attention, it gives us energy, they prepare us for action. So this is the good stress. But now, imagine that that alarm doesn't stop. So those factory workers have to push through. They have to go beyond their work hours and have their, you know, task of social the problem during the night. What's happening is that as they're trying to fix the problem,

there are a couple of things, you know, the night crew cannot clean up after them, you know, the glymphatic system, allowing the brain to remove the waste during the day and remove the toxins so that the next day we wake up with a clear thinking. And also the archivists. During the REM sleep, we put, who filed the emotional paperwork, that doesn't happen. So those factory workers continue their shift on and on and on and on.

So if those things are not happening, we cannot regulate our emotion. What does that mean? You know, the threshold of tolerance goes down. We are more frustrated. We are more reactive rather than responding to the, task, the feedbacks from the leaders up high, you know, the executive functions and the prefrontal cortex is no longer happening. So it's a downward spiral. Continuing, it leads to burnout. When the warning light starts flashing, the workers don't stop, they push harder, the signals

of the factory, the demands, the deadlines, the noise become louder and louder. And this is where a disconnect happens. And this is the threshold and the bridge towards Anhedonia. Because they are no longer listening to the signals in the system, in their system. You know, that sweet sigh of relief. And turning their attention back to their heart, to their minds, to their well-being. And this disconnection grows. and bigger and bigger and bigger.

And this is why on those moments, on those first signals, if you allowed your mind to come back to itself, to breathe and to settle into a state of being that is present, that is calm, that is peaceful, this is where emotional regulation comes and it also helps falling. asleep. Yeah, so we'll have a look at some techniques that we can employ to tackle these problems in a bit later on. But let's have a look at some of the specific emotional effects that a lack of sleep can have. And I think the first one most people will think of is if we haven't had a good night sleep, you know, we get a bit sort of cranky and a bit short-tempered. Do we know what's going on that? Yeah, it's an imbalance between the emotional brain, the limbic system, which goes in

overdrive, and sort of we put on the brakes on the prefrontal cortex. So the executive function of our brain, rather than be the mediator and to have a calming, a soothing, and showing the emotional brain the consequences, because one of the functions of the prefrontal cortex is showing the person the consequences. Jordan Peterson used to say that we send the avatars of our own imagination into the future to go through the consequences of one choice or another. When the prefrontal cortex is no longer as active as it could be after a very good night's sleep, then this capacity is no longer as optimal as we want it to be.

So at this moment, the emotional brain, with no consequences, goes berserk. This is why we get so easily irritated, that lack of consequences. And there's a study where they show that the emotional intelligence goes down, the recognition of a change in emotion in the other person. So the social intelligence also goes down. And we're more likely to answer in spite, with anger, when that is happening. So another emotion that people who are lacking sleep often feel is the tendency to feel sort of sadness or get sort of upset more easily or more deeply.

So one example that I've heard is one of my friends works as an architect. Many years ago, often they work very long hours. Many years ago, she was really sleep deprived and she was making a drawing of some section of a building and zoomed in. And the two lines that were supposed to meet at the corner didn't quite touch. And she said she just started crying uncontrollably. You know, over something so simple as that, just really got her upset. Interesting. There's another part of the brain called the striatum that is very sensitive to reward. And when that is not happening, when the rewards stop from coming, right, there is what is called hopelessness and helplessness.

And that future that we projected at some point, we projected, of course, with some benefits, some rewards, some rewards, some good things happening. When all of those things are not happening, then again, this imbalance between prefrontal cortex that doesn't get what it wants from what it has projected and the emotional brain is going into an imbalance. And this is where reactivity comes. With a very calm, rested brain,

your friend would have never gone through this experience of overreacting like this. So it's again this idea of the reward sensitivity. If that reward doesn't come, saddening. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. for Citizens Bank. You said this place was steps from the water.

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So why does lack of sleep affect our concentration so profoundly? There are a couple of brain areas. One is the thalamus which maintains attention, which cannot be sustained. when we are sleep deprived. Another one, so first is attention, then is memory with the hippocampus. The working memory is not as sharp as it could be, right? So the attention is really, really difficult for us to focus and maintain on one task or another. When we do it, it's very difficult, it very daunting. it becomes an unsurmountable task.

And then not only that the attention is very hard to maintain on a certain task, but it's also very difficult because the hippocampus doesn't register all we have to focus on. And it goes through one year and it comes out through the other without being registered. And we have to go back. And that plays into the emotion as well, because we get more and more frustrated. And then that builds our anxiety up. We go to sleep and said, oh, my God, I didn't prepare for that exam. Or I have this BBC podcast and I have to, ah, what am I going to do?

And that keeps you up at night. You wake up time. So I want our listener to imagine it like a feedback loop. everything plays into the other component. So at some point, when we are going to talk about strategies, it's important to know that we can actually step back from this spiral and take back control of how the mind thinks and how the body reacts to all of it.

Yeah, so famously, like some people like Napoleon, etc., say that they only slept to three, four hours a night or something like that. So are some people more prone to the effects of sleep deprivation? Or is that just people like that kind of making a flex saying, you know, I'm so super, I don't need sleep? I have a story. May I share a story with you? Yes, please do.

I was starting in psychiatry. And I was this young, determined and motivated person who wanted to save everybody. You know that guy? So I thought that in my imagination, I wanted to make a difference. So I started going in psychiatry, and at some point, one of my colleagues in geriatric psychiatry asked me to take over for him because he had an emergency and he had to go home. And when I stepped into the clinic, the geriatric clinic, I was welcomed by 80. seven-year-old lady patient.

And she looked deeply into my eyes and said, are you my son? And I said, okay, this is my moment. This is where I take the dementia away and, you know, at least give her a sense of clarity of mind. Who doesn't try, doesn't gain anything, right? So I started with my first technique and I started doing all of these clever things. And at some point she stopped me after 10 minutes and she looked at me and said, Are you my son?

Of course, this repeats itself three, four times. And you know, my confidence worth in at some point. And I said at about the fourth or fifth time, are you my son? And I go, yes, I am your son. I couldn't. She looked at me, I said, what took you so long? and she hugged me and she said how good of a son I was. And for one minute, for a couple of minutes actually,

she was happy. She was in a state of joy because her son visited her. And she fell asleep. And I realized that that moment, that what I'm doing, I want to give people those moments of clarity with their loved ones. I would love for that mother or that father to have a moment of clarity and of love with their children. So I said, one good way of doing that is by teaching about sleep. To be honest, I really don't know about these rare cases where people can go on three hours or four hours sleep.

I know some people who were bragging about doing that, you know, some entrepreneurs. And I researched and I looked into their evolution over time. And some of them had heart problems at some point in their lives. Some of them had strokes because it has effects in the cardiovascular system quite important. So I wouldn't recommend it. Even if there was a tendency where the return, particular activating system was such that they were wired that way, I would still have time for them to do a meditative practice or to take time to breathe and to relax and to close

their eyes for just a couple of moments. Sure. So let's have a look at some of these techniques. Say that somebody listening is having trouble sleeping and they're finding themselves getting irritable, their performance at work's going down. What sort of first appointment advice would you give to somebody who's struggling in that way? There's a theory called the self-determination theory and it talks about the three needs that people have. One is for competence. They want to know that they are competent in something. The second one is relatedness. They want connection. We are social beings. We want to know that we have a person to talk to. And the third is autonomy, the freedom of choice.

And I would start with that, honestly. I would start with, where are you in terms of competence? Where are you? How competent do you feel and how much confidence does that give you? And what do you need to do? Because planning for the brain gives a pathway, right? Give something to look for and plan and prepare. And whenever that happens, I found that people are less prone to anxiety.

Another thing is connectedness. One of the practice that I do in my family is called a family hug. No matter what we're doing, we have that one minute. If it's one minute, we have to have that me, my wife and my son. we have that hug where we feel that we belong with one another, we love one another, and there is that connection. And for the third, for autonomy, I want to make sure that I have a day, at least three things that I'm choosing to do for myself or for others, but I am, I have that agency, I have that choice of putting forward. That's one set of exercises.

Then meditation. This is where the conversation needs to be differentiated. There are two kinds of meditation. A focused meditation, and for me, I have to do it in the morning because it wakes my neurology up and it makes me focus and ready for the day. And a relaxation meditation, like Yoga Nidra and, you know, where you, allow the tension to dissipate and you just relax. And it's only a step towards falling asleep.

So make sure you have this distinction. Because some people say, well, I meditated and I couldn't sleep all night. Yes. What kind of meditation have you done? Because it changes. Neurologically, neurobiologically changes. So how about the benefits? of taking physical exercise on our quality of sleep and our ability to regulate our emotions.

Ah, that's, I love it. I love this one. Again, like the meditation and coffee, I cannot do everything very physical after 2 o'clock. Some people, you know, for physical activities, they say four to six hours before sleep. But for me, if I drink coffee after, to, or if I do a physical exercise, I can say, I am not going to sleep. But for the emotional regulation, it is amazing and for allowing you to fall asleep. Because I think, again, they are intertwined. Yes, we talked about an awful lot there. So by way of summary, what key pieces of advice would you give to someone listening who thinks that they could benefit from some of the things that we've talked about today.

First of all, I want to have that clarity of mind. For me, clarity of mind is very important. Working in psychiatry and working in medicine, I always had a lot of compassion for people who lost that edge, who lost that clarity of mind. And that was, you know, we are motivated by pain or by pleasure. This is my pain motivation, where I say, I will never lose my clarity of mind.

For the pleasure principle or for the pleasure motivation, I want to live, love and laugh until the last day of my life, with that clarity of mind. And I want to also have people who I can live and laugh and love until the end of my days. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Dr Bogdan Mate.

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