You’re way more emotional than usual
Have you ever snapped at someone you love and thought, “Where did that come from?” There may be a neurological explanation. One study found that sleep deprivation caused the amygdala to react about 60% more strongly to negative stimuli, while simultaneously weakening the brain region that helps regulate those reactions.
“The emotional parts of the brain react more strongly, and the systems that help regulate those reactions—they just don’t work as well,” Benavides says. “When patients say, ‘I get cranky when I’m tired,’ that’s not a personality issue. There’s actual brain research behind that.”
You might confess to something you didn’t do
Here’s a weird one: In a 2016 study, sleep-deprived participants were more than four times as likely as well-rested ones to sign a statement falsely claiming they’d done something they hadn’t. “Fatigue didn’t just make people slower,” Benavides says. “It made them more likely to go along with something that was just not true.” The implications extend well beyond the lab—at work, in difficult conversations, or anywhere someone is pressured to agree to something they know isn’t right, a sleep-deprived brain is far more likely to capitulate.
Read the full article here
