The Importance Of Sleep Deprivation On Human Emotions

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Given the effect of sleep deprivation on our lives, understanding the cellular and molecular pathways affected by sleep deprivation is clearly of social and clinical importance. Sleep deprivation (SD), or sleep loss is ordinary in modern society. The increasing time of sleep loss could lead to sleepiness, involuntary 'microsleep', problems in sustained attention, and cognitive slowing. However, the underlying effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive capacities remain unclear. According to an emerging energy allocation model or, (EA), biological processes that remain unfulfilled to sleep loss largely lead to the functional deficits. The longer a person remains awake, the greater the tension between the mounting homeostatic pressure for sleep …show more content…

The occurrence of these different effects of sleep deprivation has been observed in previous studies by tracking changes at the macro, meso and micro levels. The macro level describes the effect of sleep deprivation on human behavior, including cognitive functions, emotional processes, muscular activity, kinematics, as well as a range of behaviors that involve crude changes in large brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex, thalamus and hippocampus. Experts believe that sleep promotes the consolidation and long-term storage of newly acquired information in the brain and makes memories more resistant to interference from new information. Experts also believe that sleep deprivation interferes with these processes, impairing short-term memory (such as retaining a telephone number in your mind while dialing), procedural memory (remembering how to perform certain actions, such as riding a bicycle), and declarative memory (recollection of facts and …show more content…

In this regard, direct evidence for sleep deprivation in humans has mostly been looked for in indicators of the macro level functioning. Such an approach in solving the problem of the effect of sleep deprivation on neural functioning in humans is incomplete; however, for now, it offers an accessible manner of researching the problem, as well as a possible basis for targeted search for specific mechanisms in human subjects in future

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