Sleep Deprivation Impairs the Accurate Recognition of Human Emotions

Abstract

Study Objectives: Investigate the impact of sleep deprivation on the ability to recognize the intensity of human facial emotions. Design: Randomized total sleep-deprivation or sleep-rested conditions, involving between-group and within-group repeated measures analysis. Setting: Experimental laboratory study. Participants: Thirty-seven healthy participants, (21 females) aged 18-25 y, were randomly assigned to the sleep control (SC: n = 17) or total sleep deprivation group (TSD: n = 20). Interventions: Participants performed an emotional face recognition task, in which they evaluated 3 different affective face categories: Sad, Happy, and Angry, each ranging in a gradient from neutral to increasingly emotional. In the TSD group, the task was performed once under conditions of sleep deprivation, and twice under sleep-rested conditions following different durations of sleep recovery. In the SC group, the task was performed twice under sleep-rested conditions, controlling for repeatability. Measurements and Results: In the TSD group, when sleep-deprived, there was a marked and significant blunting in the recognition of Angry and Happy affective expressions in the moderate (but not extreme) emotional intensity range; differences that were most reliable and significant in female participants. No change in the recognition of Sad expressions was observed. These recognition deficits were, however, ameliorated following one night of recovery sleep. No changes in task performance were observed in the SC group. Conclusions: Sleep deprivation selectively impairs the accurate judgment of human facial emotions, especially threat relevant (Anger) and reward relevant (Happy) categories, an effect observed most significantly in females. Such findings suggest that sleep loss impairs discrete affective neural systems, disrupting the identification of salient affective social cues.

Use of Psychotropic Medication in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…Sleep problems, common in ASD, have been associated with increased behavioral problems as measured by the CBCL. [12][13][14] We examined variables from the CBCL to determine associations with clusters of behaviors apart from comorbid psychiatric diagnoses. Although we found no influence of internalizing problems, there was a relationship with clinically significant scores on the externalizing problems scale and the CBCL Total Score.…”

Changes in attention to an emotional task after sleep deprivation: Neurophysiological and behavioral findings

“…However, compared to the clear impairments in attention that have been shown after sleep loss, sleep loss has been found to have mixed results on emotion processing. In particular, some studies have shown decreased emotionality after sleep loss indicated by blunted affect (Talbot, McGlinchey, Kaplan, Dahl, & Harvey, 2010), impaired accurate recognition of human emotions (Van der Helm, Gujar, & Walker, 2010), decreased emotional expressiveness (Minkel, Htaik, Banks, & Dinges, 2011), and reduced emotional intelligence (Killgore et al, 2008). However, other studies have found increased emotionality after sleep loss indicated by exaggerated responses to negative stimuli , increased amygdala activity in response to emotionally negative stimuli (Yoo, Gujar, Hu, Jolesz, & Walker, 2007), and increased reward network activity in response to emotionally positive stimuli (Gujar, Yoo, Hu, & Walker, 2011).…”

Facial emotion recognition and sleep in mentally disordered patients: A natural experiment in a high security hospital

“…The face images used here expressed strong and unambiguous emotional expressions but previous work suggests that sleep exerts a greater effect on the recognition of less intense expressions (van der Helm et al, 2010). More subtle emotional expressions are likely to require a more sophisticated level of emotion perception, and it may be that the effect of good quality sleep is most evident in the facilitation of such affective perceptual processes.…”

“…Several studies (e.g. Walker and van der Helm, 2009;van der Helm et al, 2010) have also shown that sleep deprivation may impair the recognition of emotional facial expressions. Thus, for patients suffering from mental disorders and poor sleep patterns, interventions to improve sleep quality may be of benefit to facial emotion recognition.…”