People who have a tendency to daydream may also suffer from primary insomnia because they have trouble switching their brains off, according to a new study.
Primary insomnia causes patients to
suffer from disturbed sleep without any obvious cause such as
depression, chronic pain or substance abuse. Photo: SGO/ALAMY
8:00PM BST 30 Aug 2013
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Attention problems may not only cause problems during the day, but also keep
people awake at night because they cannot stop thoughts appearing in their
head.
Brain scans of people with primary insomnia revealed that unlike healthy
sleepers, they cannot shut down regions of the brain linked to wandering
thoughts when given a complex task to focus on.
This makes jobs during the day harder to complete, and could also explain why
they have trouble switching off when they go to bed at night, researchers
said.
The discovery of a link between affected daytime and night-time brain activity
could lead to new targets in the search for effective treatments against
insomnia, they claimed.
Primary insomnia causes patients to suffer from disturbed sleep without any
obvious cause such as depression, chronic pain or substance abuse.
People who sleep well are able to selectively activate and deactivate regions
of the brain used for "working memory" when trying to complete
complex tasks, but primary insomniacs struggle to block out irrelevant
thoughts.
Researchers from the University of California compared brain scans of 25 patients against 25 healthy sleepers, and found that while both were equally competent at completing tasks involving working memory, those with primary insomnia could not "dial down" parts of the brain which are activated when the mind wanders.
Dr Sean Drummond, who published his team's findings in the Sleep journal, explained: "People with insomnia not only have trouble sleeping at night, but their brains are not functioning as efficiently during the day.
"We found that insomnia subjects did not properly turn on brain regions critical to a working memory task and did not turn off 'mind-wandering' brain regions irrelevant to the task.
"It is not surprising that someone with insomnia would feel like they are working harder to do the same job as a healthy sleeper."
Reference: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10277252/Daydreamers-at-greater-risk-of-insomnia.html
Researchers from the University of California compared brain scans of 25 patients against 25 healthy sleepers, and found that while both were equally competent at completing tasks involving working memory, those with primary insomnia could not "dial down" parts of the brain which are activated when the mind wanders.
Dr Sean Drummond, who published his team's findings in the Sleep journal, explained: "People with insomnia not only have trouble sleeping at night, but their brains are not functioning as efficiently during the day.
"We found that insomnia subjects did not properly turn on brain regions critical to a working memory task and did not turn off 'mind-wandering' brain regions irrelevant to the task.
"It is not surprising that someone with insomnia would feel like they are working harder to do the same job as a healthy sleeper."
Reference: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10277252/Daydreamers-at-greater-risk-of-insomnia.html
