A sleepless night develops the symptoms of schizophrenia
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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Experts have long determined that a sleepless night leads to a loss of attention, but the latest work of international experts led by two London universities, showed that a day without sleep can provoke a person's symptoms of schizophrenia. Scientists themselves were extremely surprised by the severity and breadth of symptoms resembling schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is a severe form of mental disorder that affects the mind and behavior of a person (thought processes, emotions, perception, motor activity, etc.). At a schizophrenia at the person disturbances of thinking and wrong perception of an event are often observed.
As a result of the research, the scientists found out that a person who has not slept for more than a day has symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia.
For their research specialists invited volunteers, whose age was from 18 to 40 years. In total, 24 people took part in the experiment. At the initial stage, all participants had to sleep in the usual regime, but only in the laboratory. A week later, the scientists set the task for the participants to stay out all night. Volunteers could watch movies, play games, take walks, talk among themselves. In the morning, participants had to tell experts about their thoughts and feelings, in addition, scientists evaluated using a pre-pulse inhibition of the function of filtering information by the brain (the ability to avoid sensory overload and highlight important).
As a result, scientists determined that a sleepless night leads to the fact that the brain is coping worse with its filtration function, while there was a pronounced attention deficit that occurs with schizophrenia. Also after interviewing the participants, the specialists found out that there was an increased sensitivity to light, colors or brightness, and the sense of smell and temporary perception also changed.
Experts call many reasons for insomnia, but in recent works, scientists have determined that people with insomnia have a different brain. As scientists believe, excessive daytime activity of the brain leads to the fact that at night people can not fall asleep.
In their experiments, experts examined about 30 people from fifty years of age, 18 of whom had been suffering from insomnia for more than a year and the rest considered their sleep to be quite strong.
Specialists measured the brain plasticity of volunteers by stimulating the motor cortex. At the same time, scientists followed the involuntary movements of the thumbs. After that, the participants had to move their thumb in the opposite direction from the involuntary side and the specialists repeated the stimulation.
As a result, scientists have determined that people who have plasticity of the motor cortex are less able to move in the opposite direction from the involuntary side of the movement, which completely contradicted the expectations of scientists. In this case, people with insomnia, the activity of the brain was higher and they coped with the goal set before them. But experts believe that with a more complex task such people can not cope.
Increased brain activity can not make up for a lack of sleep, and for brain plasticity, sleep is extremely important. From this it follows that a lack of sleep leads to a decrease in cerebral plasticity. But at this stage, scientists can not say exactly, high cerebral activity is to blame for insomnia, or insomnia provokes increased brain activity.
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