It's no secret that sleep deprivation can affect our mood. But according to research from the University of Bern in Switzerland, not getting enough sleep can affect how we treat others, too.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in three American adults do not get the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep they need most nights. Sleep is essential for our mental and physical wellbeing, so chronic sleep deprivation like this is a serious public health concern.
Sleep helps us consolidate our memories and aids physical recovery, and not getting enough has been shown to contribute to heart disease, obesity, neurodegenerative disorders and depression. On a societal level, sleep deprivation can also affect our ability to function socially, with poor sleep linked to reduced altruism, trustworthiness, and helping other people.
However, these characteristics can also vary greatly between individuals. Therefore, the team from Bern hypothesized that individual variation in altruistic behavior may be a result of individual differences in sleep quality.
In a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers measured the brain activity of 54 healthy adults during a normal night's sleep in their homes. They then determined how likely each individual was to perform altruistic behaviors using a game where participants were given "points" equating to real money which they could either keep or contribute to the "public good."
Interestingly, individuals gave more of their money away in the "public good" game if they experienced more slow wave sleep activity, representative of deeper sleep, in the right temporal lobe of their brains, a region known to play an important role in learning and empathy.
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"Recent sleep deprivation studies imply that sleeping enough makes us more [altruistic, but] the present findings suggest that it is not only sleep duration, but particularly sufficient sleep depth in the right temporo-parietal junction that is positively related to [altruistic behavior]," the authors write.
They added: "Furthermore, our study provides evidence about a possible neural mechanism that underlies the behavioral findings of previous studies on sleep deprivation and [altruistic] behavior."
The researchers hope that their findings will help with future approaches to support and encourage empathy and altruistic behaviors in those who struggle to see things from other people's perspectives.
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Our sleep quality may significantly impact how likely we are to help others, scientists say. Our sleep quality may significantly impact how likely we are to help others, scientists say. Kate Aedon/Getty
