BIO SCI 47 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Jet Lag, Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep, Circadian Rhythm
23 May 2018
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Stress Lecture 17
● Cortisol levels rise when you throw off your circadian rhythm
● Elevated levels of cortisol puts you at higher risk of cardiac disease, diabetes, sex
hormone imbalances
● Temporal lobe is smaller in people with jet lag
○ Hippocampus is in temporal lobe
○ Amygdala
● People with highest level of cortisol suffer the most with losing brain matter
● Cortisol levels go down when you sleep
● When hippocampus shrinks its because cortisol damages and shrinks hippocampal
neurons
○ Harder time forming memory
● Hard to sleep when stressed bc cortisol is up
○ Harder to get deep sleep
● Fibromyalgia patients don’t get deep sleep
○ Fibromyalgia means high cortisol levels bc stress response is trying to be anti
inflammatory
● Fibromyalgia is chronic pain syndrome caused by inflammation
● Someone with depression doesn’t get stage 4, deep, sleep
○ Mostly gets shallow sleep
○ Constantly waking up
● High cortisol in depressed patients
● When awake for hours on end, amygdala starts firing
Depression
