Sleep and emotional processing

A growing body of literature suggests that sleep plays a critical role in emotional processing. This review aims at synthesizing current evidence on the role of sleep and sleep loss in the modulation of emotional reactivity, emotional memory formation, empathic behavior, fear conditioning, threat generalization and extinction memory. Behavioral and neurophysiological evidence suggesting that rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep plays an important role in emotional processing is also discussed. Furthermore, we examine the relations between sleep and emotions by reviewing the functional neuroimaging studies that elucidated the brain mechanisms underlying these relations.
Source: Sleep Medicine Reviews - Category: Sleep Medicine Authors: Tags: Physiological Review Source Type: research