Using emotion regulation strategies after sleep deprivation: ERP and behavioral findings

Abstract

Sleep deprivation is suggested to impact emotion regulation, but few studies have directly examined it. This study investigated the influence of sleep deprivation on three commonly used emotion regulation strategies (distraction, reappraisal, suppression) in Gross's (1998) process model of emotion regulation. Young healthy adults were randomly assigned to a sleep deprivation group (SD; n = 26, 13 males, age = 20.0 ± 1.7) or a sleep control group (SC; n = 25, 13 males, age = 20.2 ± 1.7). Following 24-h sleep deprivation or normal nighttime sleep, participants completed an emotion regulation task, in which they naturally viewed or applied a given emotion regulation strategy towards negative pictures, with electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. A reduction in the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes towards negative pictures from the naturally viewing condition to a regulated condition was calculated as an index of regulatory effects. Comparisons between the two groups indicated that sleep deprivation significantly impaired the regulatory effects of distraction and reappraisal on LPP amplitudes. Suppression did not reduce LPP amplitudes in either group. In addition, habitual sleep quality moderated the effect of sleep deprivation on subjective perception of emotional stimuli, such that sleep deprivation only made good sleepers perceive negative pictures as more unpleasant and more arousing, but it had no significant effect on poor sleepers' perception of negative pictures. Altogether, this study provides the first evidence that sleep deprivation may impair the effectiveness of applying adaptive emotion regulation strategies (distraction and reappraisal), creating potentially undesirable consequences to emotional well-being.

Effects of sleep deprivation on empathy for pain and emotion regulation: A behavioral and neuroimaging study

“…Hence, most participants likely did succeed to downregulate experienced unpleasantness when instructed to do so. Contrary to our hypothesis and findings in previous studies (24,29,36), sleep deprivation caused no significant decrease in ability to reappraise.…”

“…Negativity bias is that sleep deprivation causes neutral stimuli to be perceived as more negative, making the emotional baseline and starting point for reappraisal not fully comparable with that of the full-sleep condition (24). Negativity bias can partially explain differences in study results, since Tamm (24,29,36). In this study and in the study by Shermohammed et al (37), behavioral results were based on ratings of a negative emotion only.…”

“…The studies in which significant effect on emotion regulation has been previously detected, are conducted using different methods. The differences create a trend that negativity bias is present in the studies where no effect of sleep deprivation has been found (24,29,36). Negativity bias is that sleep deprivation causes neutral stimuli to be perceived as more negative, making the emotional baseline and starting point for reappraisal not fully comparable with that of the full-sleep condition (24).…”

“…The biggest effect has most consistently been detected in ability to downregulate negative emotions (28). For example, when participants were instructed to cognitively reappraise responses caused by negative stimuli, those who were sleep-deprived were significantly less effective in downregulating their negative emotional response (29…”

Mindfulness Versus Cognitive Reappraisal: the Impact of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on the Early and Late Brain Potential Markers of Emotion Regulation

“…A study investigating the impact of cognitive reappraisal on early emotion processing found that whilst a more positive P200 was elicited when cognitive reappraisal was implemented to enhance a negative emotional response, no P200 modulation was observed when the instructions were to reduce the negative response (Wu et al, 2013). This suggests that the adaptive regulatory effects of cognitive reappraisal may only have an impact on later evaluative stages of emotional processing.…”