That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-Lack of Sleep

Episode Date: January 28, 2023

In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss the neuroscience behind lack of sleep. 

Hi, my name is Olaf Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another neuroscience bite. So we've done an episode on sleep in the brain, what's going on while you sleep. on sleep in the brain, what's going on while you sleep. But I thought I'd do a bite on what happens in the brain when we have trouble sleeping. Something I've been dealing with recently. So I did a little reading and learned some things and some stuff I kind of already knew, of course. So when we have trouble sleeping, one of the things that pops up right away is we have trouble forming new memories.

And that's because the hippocampus doesn't function the way it's supposed to when we're not sleeping well or we're getting a lack of sleep. And therefore, we have trouble forming long-term memories. Related to that, there's also disruption in the prefrontal cortex and the parietal lobes. And that leads to the creation of false memories. Now, we haven't really talked a lot about false memories, but basically false memories are memories that are altered. So there's some basis in fact, but there's also some stuff that's missing, if you will. Another thing that definitely comes up when we have a lack of sleep is we have more anger. We're more prone to be emotional and angry. And that's because a lack of sleep is also correlated with an increase in activity of the amygdala.

So basically your mood is just running wild. We have impaired wit. When we have a lack of sleep, basically there's, again, some reduced activity in the inferior frontal gyrus right near the front of the brain. And basically, sleep-deprived people then have trouble with cognitive function in general. So they might not be able to switch between topics. They might not be able to suggest something funny or alternatives. If the lack of sleep gets extreme, we even experience hallucinations. And the reason for that is that we've got weird or differential activity across the brain as a whole. So you get more activity in the temporal lobes, more activity in the prefrontal cortex, and that leads to

hallucinations. We can make some poor eating choices, and that's because of this decrease in activity sometimes a lack of sleep leads to a decrease in in activity in the prefrontal cortex which combined with that emotional activity that we talked about means that you're more likely to have some ice cream or eat down a bag of potato chips people make more risky decisions when they're experiencing a lack of sleep. And that's because the reward center basically starts functioning a bit weird. It seems to be very sensitive to wins, so increases in fortune, but doesn't seem to fire like it normally does when we lose money. So people, because of that, because they're not processing losses as losses or poor outcomes as poor outcomes,

people tend to make more risky decisions when they're sleep deprived. And if sleep deprivation comes on for a long period of time, like you're perpetually tired and you're perpetually suffering from lack of sleep, research has even shown that there's actual potential brain damage. All right. The brainstem itself has reduced functional capability, and this is more permanent. And you also get shrinkage in the cortex overall. So a permanent lack of sleep. So if your sleep hygiene is poor, you actually can get eventually get brain damage. Now, if you're just having a couple of bad nights of sleep, obviously that's not going to happen. You're going to see some of these more, you know,

things that pop up. For instance, a classic is slurred speech if you're really tired. So just like you might get slurred speech if you're intoxicated, if you're very tired, you can get slurred speech because the language centers in the temporal cortex aren't functioning as well as they could. But these more permanent changes, like brain damage, like I mentioned, that only occurs if you're perpetually sleep-deprived. We're talking for years on end. There's a little bit about what's going on in the brain when we have a lack of sleep.

So another neuroscience bite. And I'll see you on Wednesday for another full episode of the podcast. My name is Olive Kregolson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. Don't forget to check out our website, thatneuroscienceguy.com for links to Etsy, Patreon, and other

stuff. And of course, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and please subscribe.