The mix of tiredness, euphoria and dizziness that follows a sleepless night is explained by dopamine and how its release rewires the brain. This is shown by a group of neurobiologists who have studied this effect of specific lack of sleep in experiments.
Acute sleep deprivation exerts an antidepressant action, maintained for a few days, according to a study carried out with mice which is published today in Neuronwith Mingzheng Wu as first author of the paper.
But do not try this at home: The effect is temporary and science has long demonstrated the benefits of sleeping well every night. “It is better to go to the gym or take a good walk than to stay up all night to brighten your spirits,” emphasizes the principal investigator of the work, Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, professor of Neurobiology at Northwestern University in Chicago. However, delving into this effect can be useful to “find the right antidepressant for each person.”
Neurobiologists at Northwestern University have discovered why it occurs that feeling of euphoria. To do this, they induced mild and acute sleep deprivation in the animals and then examined their behaviors and brain activity, with optical and genetic tools with which they measured the neuronal response.
Brain plasticity