Emotional Expressiveness in Sleep-Deprived Healthy Adults

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of sleep deprivation on emotional expression and subjective emotional experience in a highly controlled, laboratory setting. Twenty-three healthy adult participants watched positive (amusing) and negative (sad) film clips before and after they were randomly assigned to a night of sleep deprivation or a normal sleep control condition. The intensity of their facial expressiveness while viewing the films was coded by human judges and compared to their subjective emotional responses. Relative to the control group, sleep-deprived participants demonstrated less expressiveness, especially in response to positive stimuli. Subjective responses were not significantly different between the sleep-deprived and control groups. These preliminary results suggest that sleep deprivation is associated with attenuated emotional expressiveness in healthy adults.

Emotional and Cognitive Impact of Sleep Restriction in Children

“…It could be hypothesized that a general reduction in arousal after sleep loss might lead to a decrease in emotional responses, especially to stimuli eliciting positive responses. 41 This interpretation is consistent with the results of Talbot and colleagues 21 and Vriend and colleagues, 22 in that sleep restriction in children reduced positive affective responses but did not increase negative affective responses. Another study reported that sleep loss in medical residents dampened responses to positive opportunities while amplifying negative feelings and fatigue in response to negative daytime events; these responses were related to reduced availability of cognitive energy for responding to either class of events.…”

Social interactions, emotion and sleep: A systematic review and research agenda

“…Sleep loss is known to alter the stress system [38], and insomnia has been associated with hyperarousal [96,97]. As such, evidence of hypervigilance or improved performance may be anticipated, although expressed emotion is also reportedly "blunted" with sleep loss [59,67] with slower facial movements [8]. The relationships between emotion perception, emotional expressivity, and emotional experiences also seem to be important to investigate further.…”

“…This is relevant to both social interactions and emotional regulation. Specifically, Minkel et al [59] induced amusement or sadness via movie clips, and subjects' facial movements were visually recorded. Sleep deprived subjects were significantly less facially expressive when shown both types of movies compared to rested controls, with a larger effect size towards amusing clips than sad movies [56].…”

Changes in attention to an emotional task after sleep deprivation: Neurophysiological and behavioral findings

“…However, compared to the clear impairments in attention that have been shown after sleep loss, sleep loss has been found to have mixed results on emotion processing. In particular, some studies have shown decreased emotionality after sleep loss indicated by blunted affect (Talbot, McGlinchey, Kaplan, Dahl, & Harvey, 2010), impaired accurate recognition of human emotions (Van der Helm, Gujar, & Walker, 2010), decreased emotional expressiveness (Minkel, Htaik, Banks, & Dinges, 2011), and reduced emotional intelligence (Killgore et al, 2008). However, other studies have found increased emotionality after sleep loss indicated by exaggerated responses to negative stimuli , increased amygdala activity in response to emotionally negative stimuli (Yoo, Gujar, Hu, Jolesz, & Walker, 2007), and increased reward network activity in response to emotionally positive stimuli (Gujar, Yoo, Hu, & Walker, 2011).…”