A new study revealed that the brains of the insomniacs are too busy than good sleepers. This finding may help in the development of treatments for sleeping disorders that focus more on regulating brain activities.
Insomnia, or sleeplessness, is a sleeping disorder characterized by inability to sleep and/or staying asleep; and even if one is able to sleep, the person still feels exhausted. According to the Sleep Foundation, the best way to describe the condition is the inability to get the amount of sleep needed to wake up feeling fully rested.
In the United States, about 30 to 40 percent of the adults reported feeling insomniac and up to 15 percent of them saying they have chronic insomnia which can last for longer than a month.
Experts have often linked insomnia to stress because some reported that they have restless sleep whenever they are on a stressful situation like losing a loved one, losing a job, breaking up in relationship, and tragedies. However, a new study conducted by the researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, led by assistant professor Dr. Rachel Salas, provided evidence that this sleeping disorder may be brought by the hyperactivity of the brain.
They recruited 18 insomniacs and 10 good sleepers who underwent transcranial magnetic stimulation-a procedure that stimulates the brain cells which is also used in curing depression and migraines. The researchers wanted to find out if this technique can also be used to improve the sleeping condition of the insomniacs.
They also analyzed the brain plasticity of the participants first using electroencephalograms (EEG). They wanted to see if the insomniacs will perform poorly on remembering patterns because of the poor amount of sleep. However, they were surprised that they were able to perform better than the good sleepers in terms of picking up new task and remembering them.
"Their brain waves look different from good sleepers," Salas said to TIME. "Traditionally in normal sleep, the brain waves slow down, become more synchronous and get into a nice delta wave for sleep. Insomniacs may get into delta sleep, but they have other faster rhythms riding on top of their EEG."
However, they also found that insomniacs did well only on easier tasks but poorly on complicated tasks. They will continue further studies to see how this can be improved.
This study was published in the March 1 issue of the journal Sleep.
