睡眠不足可引发焦虑症

A sleepless night can leave the brain spinning with anxiety the next day.

一个不眠之夜会让你的大脑在第二天焦躁不安。

In healthy adults, overnight sleep deprivation triggered anxiety the next morning, along with altered brain activity patterns, scientists reported November 4 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

科学家在11月4日的神经科学学会年会上报告说，对于健康的成年人，24小时的睡眠剥夺会在第二天早晨引发焦虑以及大脑活动模式的改变。

People with anxiety disorders often have trouble sleeping. The new results uncover the reverse effect — that poor sleep can induce anxiety. The study shows that “this is a two-way interaction,” says Clifford Saper, a sleep researcher at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who wasn’t involved in the study. “The sleep loss makes the anxiety worse, which in turn makes it harder to sleep.”

焦虑症患者常常难以入睡。新的发现指出反过来也是一样——睡眠不佳会导致焦虑。该研究表明，“这是一种双向互动，”哈佛医学院睡眠研究员、波士顿贝斯以色列女执事医疗中心的Clifford Saper向我们解释说，“睡眠不足会使焦虑变得更加严重，从而使睡眠变得更加困难。”他并没有参与这项研究。

Sleep researchers Eti Ben Simon and Matthew Walker, both of the University of California, Berkeley, studied the anxiety levels of 18 healthy people. Following either a night of sleep or a night of staying awake, these people took anxiety tests the next morning. After sleep deprivation, anxiety levels in these healthy people were 30 percent higher than when they had slept. On average, the anxiety scores reached levels seen in people with anxiety disorders, Ben Simon said November 5 in a news briefing.

睡眠问题研究员、加州大学伯克利分校的Eti Ben Simon和Matthew Walker分析了18名健康的实验志愿者的焦虑水平。无论是沉入梦乡还是一夜未眠，都会在第二天早上对他们进行焦虑测试。剥夺睡眠后，这些健康人的焦虑水平比正常睡眠时高30%。Ben Simon在11月5日的新闻发布会上说，平均而言，他们的焦虑表现评分达到了焦虑症患者的水平。

What’s more, sleep-deprived people’s brain activity changed. In response to emotional videos, brain areas involved in emotions were more active, and the prefrontal cortex, an area that can put the brakes on anxiety, was less active, functional MRI scans showed.

更重要的是，睡眠不足的人的大脑活动模式也发生了变化。在对情绪视频的响应中，功能性MRI扫描显示，涉及情绪的大脑区域更加活跃，前额叶皮层——一处可以遏制焦虑的区域——则不太活跃。

The results suggest that poor sleep “is more than just a symptom” of anxiety, but in some cases, may be a cause, Ben Simon said.

结果表明，睡眠不佳“不仅仅是焦虑的症状”，在某些情况下，可能也是诱发焦虑的原因，Ben Simon总结说。