- New research in mice suggests how short-term sleep deprivation can affect dopamine, which regulates sleep and mood.
- Experts in the field say that while the research is good, more work needs to be done in order to be able to identify its relevance to humans
The study involved interrupting the sleep cycles of mice and observing both their behavior and their neurological responses.
Jamie Zeitzer (PhD), professor and co-director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences at Stanford University and Science Adviser at Rise Science, says that this research is valuable because it brings dopamine back into the conversations surrounding sleep and mood that have more recently prioritized looking at the use of medications like benzodiazepines.
“Dopamine is thought to be elevated during wakefulness and then reduced during sleep. And exactly how it’s involved, there’s lots of theories and lots of interesting ideas, but we’re not exactly sure, we just know that it’s involved somehow.”
However, Zeitzer says that it’s important to keep in mind that a rodent’s reaction to sleep deprivation is inherently different from that of humans. While some human participants in sleep studies can stay up for multiple days with minimal stress, such a reaction is impossible in rodents.
