One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days

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• Kozorovitskiy and her team examined four regions of the brain responsible for dopamine release

• esearchers induced mild, acute sleep deprivation in mice and then examined their behaviors and brain activity.

• dopamine release increase during the acute sleep loss period

• synaptic plasticity also was enhanced

• sleep loss induces a potent antidepressant effect and rewires the brain

• acute perturbations in sleep are associated with altered mental states and behaviors

• can trigger mania or occasionally reverse depressive episodes

• After a sleepless night, the animals’ behavior shifted to become more aggressive, hyperactive and hypersexual

• the activity of dopamine neurons

• was higher in animals during the brief sleep loss period

• After monitoring these areas

• three of the four areas (the prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens and hypothalamus) were involved

• The antidepressant effect disappeared only when researchers silenced the dopamine response in the medial prefrontal cortex

• hyperactivity and increased sexuality

• disappeared within a few hours following acute sleep loss, the antidepressant effect lingered for a few days

• It’s clear that acute sleep deprivation is somehow activating to an organism

• You can imagine certain situations where there is a predator or some sort of danger where you need a combination of relatively high function with an ability to delay sleep

• Kozorovitskiy suspects evolution is at play