Considered by many the evil of the 21st century, depression is still shrouded by several mysteries that science tries to unravel. Swedish research that used eye tracking came to the conclusion that poor sleep can be an aggravating factor for the disease, in addition to increasing anxiety and mood swings.
“We selected 45 men and women who spent a first night of almost constant sleep deprivation and a second night of eight hours of sleep (an amount considered normal). In both situations, we evaluated their eye movements the next morning with the help of this accurate method”, detail the authors of the study, published in the journal Nature and Science of Sleep.
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After that, the volunteers were shown photos with three types of facial expressions to be identified: a scared face, an angry face and a neutral face. The conclusion that study lead author Lieve van Egmond reached was that on the day people had had the least sleep they had more difficulty identifying moods in the photos.
“When sleep deprived, they spent less time fixating on faces. Because facial expressions are crucial to understanding someone’s emotional state, spending less time fixating on them after an acute loss of sleep can increase the risk that you interpret someone else’s emotional state inaccurately or belatedly.” of Surgical Sciences at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
The professor, however, considers that further research needs to be done to reach a conclusion about the extent to which sleep deprivation can worsen these problems.
“Our participants were young adults. Thus, we do not know whether our results are generalizable to other age groups. Furthermore, we have no way of saying whether similar conclusions would be seen among those who suffer from chronic sleep loss. This is a vast field of study, which can be explored in numerous ways in future investigations”, he concluded.
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