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In Sleepless Nights, a Hope for Treating Depression (NYTimes.com)

Sleep deprivation used as a treatment for depression is efficacious and robust: it works quickly, is relatively easy to administer, inexpensive, relatively safe and it also alleviates other types of clinical depression. Sleep deprivation can elevate your mood even if you are not depressed, and can induce euphoria.

a small area of the cerebral cortex in the front of the brain — the anterior cingulate cortex — which was consistently overactive in depressed patients, quieted to normal levels of activity after the patients were deprived of sleep. And when the patients were allowed to sleep, the activity in this area returned to the elevated levels.

Helen Mayberg at Emory University has shown that electrical stimulation of the anterior cingulate cortex, which disrupts normal activity, also reduces depression. Some patients reported feeling immediate relief and calm after the procedure.

This is interesting because it better connects sleep and depression. The idea is that if you eliminate or reduce REM sleep, depression can lift…

I’m guessing that one possibility is that REM sleep can reproduce worries that one may have during the day, which then lead to the sense of giving up and sadness that is depression - since sleep is about rehearsing and learning from what happened during the day…What’s interesting is that lack of sleep pretty much boosts everyone’s mood…I think that might also have to do with an increase in stress hormones getting released - which can be temporarily energizing - not sure…On the other hand it seems that if REM sleep is about solving problems - that’s not exactly energizing - it’s not exactly new stimuli - it’s sort of raw worry and raw solutions…so I’m guessing that REM sleep is actually more about worry than it is about energizing….and yeah, this is all just me guessing after reading an interesting article…

thx psychotherapy:

Source: psychotherapy