Losing control: Sleep deprivation impairs the suppression of unwanted thoughts

Harrington, Marcus O. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6292-7595, Ashton, Jennifer E., Sankarasubramanian, Subbulakshmi, Anderson, Michael C. and Cairney, Scott A. (2021) Losing control: Sleep deprivation impairs the suppression of unwanted thoughts. Clinical Psychological Science, 9 (1). pp. 97-113. ISSN 2167-7026

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Abstract

Unwanted memories often enter conscious awareness when individuals confront reminders. People vary widely in their talents at suppressing such memory intrusions; however, the factors that govern suppression ability are poorly understood. We tested the hypothesis that successful memory control requires sleep. Following overnight sleep or total sleep deprivation, participants attempted to suppress intrusions of emotionally negative and neutral scenes when confronted with reminders. The sleep-deprived group experienced significantly more intrusions (unsuccessful suppressions) than the sleep group. Deficient control over intrusive thoughts had consequences: Whereas in rested participants suppression reduced behavioral and psychophysiological indices of negative affect for aversive memories, it had no such salutary effect for sleep-deprived participants. Our findings raise the possibility that sleep deprivation disrupts prefrontal control over medial temporal lobe structures that support memory and emotion. These data point to an important role of sleep disturbance in maintaining and exacerbating psychiatric conditions characterized by persistent, unwanted thoughts.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: emotion regulation,memory control,open data,perseverative thoughts,psychiatric disorders,sleep deprivation,clinical psychology,4* ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200/3203
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 16 Jan 2023 16:33
Last Modified: 02 Dec 2024 01:40
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/90591
DOI: 10.1177/2167702620951511

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