Brain study: Sleepy, grumpy and … primitive?
A few nights without sleep can not only make people tired and emotional, but may actually put the brain into a primitive “fight or flight” state, researchers said on Wednesday.
Brain images of otherwise healthy men and women showed two full days without sleep seemed to rewire their brains, re-directing activity from the calming and rational prefrontal cortex to the “fear center” — the amygdala.
“It’s almost as though, without sleep, the brain had reverted back to more primitive patterns of activity, in that it was unable to put emotional experiences into context and produce controlled, appropriate responses,” said Matthew Walker of the University of California Berkeley, who led the study.
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