Data från en multimodal hjärnavbildningsstudie av yngre och äldre människor: Sleepy Brain 1-studien, version 3

Disturbed sleep is common and causes increased risks for psychiatric morbidity as well as worse subjective emotional experience. Emotional processing and regulation is important for maintaining adequate function at work and in private life. Brain mechanisms for emotional processing and social functioning is increasingly well known thanks to functional brain imaging. Our experience of others emotional states appear to be represented hierarchically in the brain. The simplest level of representation is emotional mimicry. On a higher level, empathy is a representation where one is aware that the other s emotional state is primary. Cognitive regulation and reappraisal represents the highest level of regulation. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we can identify outcomes pertaining to processing in the brain on these three levels. This project encompasses three experimental studies with functional brain imaging. In study 1, we will investigate the effect of sleep loss on emotional processing. In study 2, we will investigate the effect of sleep loss on brain activity as well as social behaviour. In study 3, we will investigate the role of sleep quality in recovery by suppressing specific sleep stages. The project is novel and important in that it connects sleep loss to subjective and objective measures not only of social emotions but also highly relevant measures of social behaviour.