Understanding how sleep supports cognition and mental health

We take a multidisciplinary approach, using experimental psychology, virtual reality, neuroimaging and psychophysiology, in healthy human participants and in patients with mental health disorders. 

Currently, we are revealing the fundamental neurocognitive mechanisms through which sleep allows us to regulate our emotions (Harrington et al., 2021) and retain memories of past experience (Cairney et al., 2018).

Figure 1. A: Taken from Harrington et al (2021, Clinical Psychological Science). Sleep deprivation increases the frequency of intrusive thoughts, leading to emotional dysregulation. B: Functional neuroimaging data suggest that sleep deprivation impairs top-down control signals in the prefrontal cortex (blue; top) during attempts to suppress intrusive thoughts arising from the hippocampus and amygdala (red; bottom).

Figure 2. Our theoretical framework, taken from Harrington & Cairney (2021, Trends in Cognitive Sciences). A: Upon encountering a reminder to a traumatic event when sleep deprived, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) fails to downregulate memory retrieval operations in hippocampus (HC) and arousal responses in amygdala (AMY). B: Impaired memory control prevents sleep-deprived individuals from suppressing intrusive thoughts. C: A vicious cycle ensues such that intrusive and uninhibited memories obstruct the sleep needed for recovery, giving rise to more persistent and distressing thought intrusions, chronic sleeplessness and psychiatric disturbance.

The knowledge generated from these projects will inform applied research in patients with dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and major depression; disorders that often co-occur with chronic sleep disturbances. The research is led by Dr Scott Cairney and is funded by the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council.

Key references

• Harrington, M.O., Ashton, J.E., Sankarasubramanian, S., Anderson, M.C., Cairney, S.A. (2021). Losing Control: Sleep Deprivation Impairs the Suppression of Unwanted Thoughts. Clinical Psychological Science, 9, 97-113
• Cairney, S.A., Guttesen, A., El Marj, N. Staresina, B.P. (2018). Memory Consolidation is Linked to Spindle-Mediated Information Processing during Sleep. Current Biology, 28, 1-7.
• Harrington, M.O., Cairney, S.A. (2021). Sleep Loss Gives Rise to Intrusive Thoughts. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25, 434-436

Lab website: epoc-lab.com