Lack of sleep and unhealthy eating habits are correlated, according to a UC Berkeley study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience Matthew Walker and doctoral students Andrea Goldstein and Stephanie Greer analyzed differences in the brain activity of 23 young adults after they experienced a normal night’s sleep compared to no sleep at all. The sleep-deprived brains showed decreased activity in the decision-making area of the frontal lobe and increased activity in the reward-receiving part of the brain.

The participants were presented with 80 images of different foods, ranging from healthy foods like fruits and vegetables to higher caloric specimens such as pizza and doughnuts. The sleepless brains found the less nutritious choices more appealing.

In a UC Berkeley press release, Walker said that the sleepless brain begins to have trouble with complex judgments and decisions and instead compensates with increased activity in primal brain structures that focus on motivation and desires.

UC Berkeley student Ryan Keane said that he either eats unhealthily or not at all during finals week, a time students are usually sleep-deprived. He said food becomes invasive and throws him off schedule.

“It all comes down to better time management,” Keane said. “If people are not sleeping well and are not eating well, they aren’t going to be productive and aren’t going to be (functioning) at the best of their abilities. It’s a horrible, perpetual cycle.”

UC Berkeley student Melanie Choi, who sleeps for one to two hours a night when she is preparing for midterms, said that with less sleep, her appetite perishes. Instead, she stays awake on coffee, tea and other drinks. Though her lack of appetite contradicts the study, she agrees that an insufficient amount of sleep hinders good health.

“It’s your decision whether or not you sleep a lot,” Choi said. “You can definitely sleep a lot, but (as a student), it is at the sacrifice of studying.”

In essence, Walker’s study scientifically suggests what several students have known all along — the more they sleep, the healthier they eat.

Contact Sasha Costello at scostello@dailycal.org.

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“The thing is, the less I sleep, the more awake I feel,” Peden said. “But at the same time,I would feel frustrated over a small quiz, which I usually wouldn’t care about.”

According to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience last Wednesday led by professor of psychology Matthew P. Walker, losing sleep can increase anticipatory anxiety, which occurs with the anticipation of a stressful event. The study, titled “Tired and Apprehensive: Anxiety Amplifies the Impact of Sleep Loss on Aversive Brain Anticipation,” confirms the positive correlation between sleep deprivation and certain kinds of anxiety.

Although previous research has indicated that lack of sleep and mental nervousness occur simultaneously, this experiment confirmed the cause-effect relationship between the two — sleep loss triggers anxiety.

Walker and the team tested 18 young adults ranging from 18 to 30 years old at UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory, scanning their brains once after a healthy sleep period and once after a night of no sleep. During each run, 90 images were passed by the participants for viewing in a period of 45 minutes as the MRI scanned their neural activity. These image stimuli were either emotional negative or neutral.

In conducting the study, researchers gave participants visual cues before the actual pictures appeared in order to monitor an anticipatory response of anxiety. A yellow circle hinted a neutral image, a red minus sign insinuated a disturbing picture and a white question mark suggested a surprise display — either a disturbing image or a neutral one.

The results showed that when waiting in anticipation as the white question mark popped up, the sleep deprived individuals displayed abnormally high activity in the amygdala and insular cortex of the brain compared to the well-rested ones. Excessive anticipatory responding and associated hyper-reactivity in these two regions are indicators of anxiety. People who are naturally more anxious, which was determined in an interview before the test, showed the most dramatic activity in these two regions.

Lead researcher Andrea Goldstein, a UC Berkeley doctoral student in neuroscience, says she hopes to see her hypotheses tested in clinically anxious populations in the near future.

“If poor sleep is in fact contributing to anxiety disorders as this study suggests, then it’s possible that treatments improving sleep may also aid in reducing anxiety,” Goldstein said.

The findings of the research may offer promise for those with clinical anxiety. This could also serve as an important warning to anxious students on campus: Sleep well before that 8 a.m. exam.

Contact Mark Tan at mtan@dailycal.org

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