The American Academy of Sleep Medicine Did a study on Gulf War veterans and found an association between poor sleep quality and the amount of grey matter in the frontal lobe of the brain.
Grey matter is a major component of the central nervous system. The grey matter is also involved with regions of the brain that involve muscle control, sensory perception: seeing, hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision making and self control. The frontal lobe of the brain, which is located behind the forehead, involves behavior, learning, personality, and voluntary movement.
This study found links between the amount of grey matter and the quality of sleep. Results show that poorer sleep quality was tied with the lack of grey matter located in the frontal lobe after controlling variables such as PTSD, depression, Gulf war illness, trauma exposure and psychotropic medication use.
This study may help explain the link between poor sleep quality and psychosocial, physical, and occupational functioning. This is an extremely important study and it stressed the need to get help if you are Effected by lack of sleep or problems associated with sleep. Many medications can aid this and even solve the problem entirely.
NOS Themes:
- Role of credibility
- science is based on evidence
- Role of change
Links:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140228160618.htm
American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
"Poor sleep quality linked to reduced brain gray matter in Gulf War vets." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 28 February 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140228160618.htm>.
That's a very interesting article! As someone whose been researching PTSD for the past couple of months for a play I'm in, mental illness in soldiers is something that I've become quite a bit more interested in. It'd be interesting to see if Grey Matter is responsible for anything, aside from lack of sleep. Something else that would be interesting would be the military's response to articles like this, and their actions in order to reduce amounts of PTSD, and consequently, sleep deprivation. There was a statistic from a VA study that showed 22 suicides per day for American Veterans, which in my opinion is horrifying. If you want to learn more information about PTSD, here are a couple of articles I came across in my research for the show.
ReplyDeletehttp://iava.org/content/post-traumatic-stress-disorder
http://www.vetcenter.va.gov
http://www1.va.gov/directory/guide/home.asp?isFlash=1&f=1
As Joe said, PTSD is a common problem with veterans, and it is shown that a loss of grey matter is a serious consequence of PTSD. PTSD is not only caused by war, and in the article I found, the researchers studied victims of the Tokyo Subway Sarin attack. They compared victims of the attack who were found to have PTSD with ones who did not have PTSD, but were still victims of the attack. They focused on an area of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC, which is most studied in cases of behavioral disorder, such as PTSD and OCD. Scientists are able to show that grey matter is severely decreased in victims with PTSD, especially when compared to people without the disorder, and victims of OCD.
ReplyDeleteArticle - http://www.pnas.org/content/100/15/9039.full.pdf
ACC info. - http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1151078
This article is written extremely well, for I can understand everything completely. I like your picture, especially because I am a visual learner it helped me understad where exactly the frontal lobe of the brain is. It's very interesting that not only did the grey matter affect sleep, but the other controlling variables such as PTSD, depression, Gulf War Illness, trauma exposure, and psychotropic medications were effects as well.
ReplyDelete