The effect of sleep restriction on empathy for pain: An fMRI study in younger and older adults

Abstract

Age and sleep both affect emotional functioning. Since sleep patterns change over the lifespan, we investigated the effects of short sleep and age on empathic responses. In a randomized cross-over experimental design, healthy young and older volunteers (n = 47 aged 20–30 years and n = 39 aged 65–75 years) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) after normal sleep or night sleep restricted to 3 hours. During fMRI, participants viewed pictures of needles pricking a hand (pain) or Q-tips touching a hand (control), a well-established paradigm to investigate empathy for pain. There was no main effect of sleep restriction on empathy. However, age and sleep interacted so that sleep restriction caused increased unpleasantness in older but not in young participants. Irrespective of sleep condition, older participants showed increased activity in angular gyrus, superior temporal sulcus and temporo-parietal junction compared to young. Speculatively, this could indicate that the older individuals adopted a more cognitive approach in response to others’ pain. Our findings suggest that caution in generalizability across age groups is needed in further studies of sleep on social cognition and emotion.

Resting state connectivity during total sleep deprivation: A functional magnetic resonance study

“…However, our results agree with previous results from SB2 (46) using partial sleep deprivation, as we did not use KSS in the same way as in that study. It also agrees with the work by Wong et al (47) that showed that GSV decreases with caffeine intake and increased vigilance, and with the findings by Fukunuga et al (48) that GSV increases during sleep.…”

Sleep restriction caused impaired emotional regulation without detectable brain activation changes – a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

“…A more detailed report of the polysomnography results can be found in (35). Because the drop-outs in this publication differ compared to previous publications from the same experiment the numbers are slightly different compared to (28,34–36).…”

“…One such difference that was aimed to be addressed in this study was age. Some of our previous work indicates that the effect of sleep restriction on both empathy (34) and mood (Schwarz submitted) is different in older age. This study did not specifically analyze the interaction between sleep restriction and age, but the results on ratings of success and unpleasantness are in line with a potential reduced sensitivity to sleep loss in older.…”

“…Imaging data were analysed using SPM12 (Statistical parametric mapping, The Welcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London) running on Matlab2015 (MATLAB 2015, The MathWorks, Inc., Massachusetts, United States). Preprocessing was done as described previously (34), including slice-time correction, realignment and unwarping, coregistration to the structural T1 weighted image and normalising to MNI using a group-specific DARTEL template. Smoothing with a kernel with 8×8×8 mm size at FWHM was performed.…”

Mood impairment is stronger in young than in older adults after sleep deprivation

“…However, this study was limited by a small sample size and the lack of established outcome measures that differentiate between negative and positive dimensions of affect. Using an empathy for pain paradigm, our recent findings indicate that the effect of partial sleep deprivation in older adults is opposite to that in younger adults (Tamm et al., ). This study focused specifically on empathy, and not on more general aspects of emotion, but nevertheless further underscores the need to study sleep manipulations in different age groups.…”