Studies // Cited work
Overnight therapy? The role of sleep in emotional brain processing
Walker, M. P., & van der Helm, E. (2009). Overnight therapy? The role of sleep in emotional brain processing.
Level D Review doi:10.1037/a0016570
What this study supports
Supports the claim that a model has been proposed in which sleep, including REM sleep, modulates next-day emotional reactivity and reprocesses recent emotional memories. A hypothesis-generating review; the model is contested and not established.
- Who was studied
- Not applicable: a review proposing a model of sleep-dependent emotional brain processing.
- Design
- Review
- Level of evidence
- Cross-sectional, observational, qualitative work and narrative reviews.
Claims that rest on it
Each claim states what the site asserts, at what strength, and with what caveat.
TheoreticalLevel DConfidence LOW
A model proposes that sleep, including REM sleep, modulates next-day emotional reactivity and reprocesses recent emotional memories; it remains a hypothesis under test.
- Scope
- Proposed neural and psychological account of sleep and emotion.
- Caveat
- Later meta-analytic evidence that sleep loss blunts arousal responses complicates simple accounts of heightened reactivity; neural findings are associations with measured activity.
Last reviewed · Review due · overnight-emotional-processing-hypothesis