Deep Sleep Can Significantly Decline Anxiety Levels

According to a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, 30% of the anxiety can trigger up if a person has a sleepless night. Moreover, the researchers have come across the type of sleep that can calm the brain and reset it from being anxious through deep sleep.

The sources say that the type is also known as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) slow-wave sleep. The neural oscillations become highly synchronized in this state, and the heart rates and blood pressure drops.

Matthew Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of neuroscience and psychology, said that they had found a new function of deep sleep that can help in reducing anxiety overnight by reorganizing connections in the brain.

The researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted various experiments using functional MRI and polysomnography and scanned 18 young adults’ brains as they were watching warmly rousing video clips both after a full night and sleepless night sleep.

After the night of no sleep, the result shows that the brain scans showed a cessation of the medial prefrontal cortex, which monitors our anxiety. However, in the full sleep nigh, the anxiety levels decayed significantly, particularly for the ones who experienced more slow-wave NREM sleep, the sources said.

Additionally, the sources add that Simon and corresponding researchers conducted the experiment on these 18 young adults’ brains, and the brain waves were measured by the electrodes placed on their heads.