Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Linking Sleep And Aggression: The Role Of Response Inhibition And Emotional Processing, Melanie L. Bozzay

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although shorter sleep duration is theorized to increase the risk of engaging in aggressive behavior, experimental studies examining this relationship yield conflicting findings. Since sleep serves in part to regulate the functioning of prefrontal brain regions, insufficient sleep may deleteriously impact the individual’s ability to inhibit rash action and alter emotional processing, which could in turn increase aggressive tendencies. However, no studies have examined the extent to which naturally occurring insufficient sleep is linked to aggression or potential mechanisms of this relationship, limiting understanding of and the generalizability of extant findings. Thus, the present study examined whether cognitive (deficits in …