We studied two groups of healthy young adults. One group stayed awake all night, monitored under full supervision in my laboratory, while the other group slept normally that night. During the brain scanning session the next day, participants in both groups were shown the same one hundred pictures that ranged from neutral in emotional content (e.g., a basket, a piece of driftwood) to emotionally negative (e.g., a burning house, a venomous snake about to strike). Using this emotional gradient of pictures, we were able to compare the increase in brain response to the increasingly negative
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