Scientists have identified a link between deep sleep and body resilience after stress

Experiments involving mice, conducted at the Morehouse Medical School and covered by the resources of Medical Xpress and ProGorodNSK.ru, showed that the phase of deep sleep accelerates the recovery of the body after stressful exposures.

The main object of study was the prelimbic cortex, responsible for the processing of emotions. During the period of slow sleep, the activity of neurons in this zone significantly decreased, and the more pronounced this decrease was, the more successfully the rodents coped with the subsequent stress.

Negative emotions provoked changes in neural connections of the prelimbic cortex. Study co-author Christopher Helen hypothesized that animals with deeper sleep have better resilience to stress because quality rest helps the brain regulate emotional responses. However, the limitations of the method are that the experiments were performed exclusively on animals. To confirm the applicability of this data to humans, additional scientific work is required. The authors believe they were able to describe a potential neural mechanism linking sleep depth to psychological resilience.