M·02
Mind & Body
Sleep Sets the Emotional Baseline
One night of deprivation raises amygdala reactivity to negative images by about 60% and weakens the prefrontal control over it.
- Evidence
- proven
- Topic
- Mind
- Things to do
- 3
- Read
- 1 min
provenHow strong is the evidence?
Tested again and again, by different people, and it keeps coming out the same. You can lean on this.
- Yoo, Gujar, Hu, Jolesz & Walker, Current Biology, 2007
- Walker, Why We Sleep (2017)
Why it works
Short sleep does not only make you tired. It disconnects the regulating circuit, so everything lands harder and you attribute it to the day.
What to do about it
- Fix the wake time first; the sleep time follows. A constant wake time is the highest-leverage change.
- Get daylight in the first hour and dim the last hour. Light is the strongest zeitgeber you control.
- Before concluding anything important about your life, check how you slept. Ruminating at 2am is a physiological state, not an insight.
Where people go wrong
Treating sleep as the flexible budget line. It is the one that everything else is drawn against.
Read next
- Name It to Tame ItPutting a feeling into words reduces amygdala activity and recruits the regulating prefrontal regions.solid
- Reframe, Don't SuppressReinterpreting a situation reduces the emotion at low cost. Suppressing the expression leaves the emotion intact and adds physiological and memory costs.proven
- Rumination Is Not Problem-SolvingRepetitively going over a problem in the first person deepens the mood and produces no solutions.solid
- Sleep Is Part of the Study SessionMemory is consolidated during sleep. What you learn before sleeping survives; what you lose sleep to learn does not.proven