. A correlation study I was interested in researching was the correlation between teenage mood swings and sleep deprivation. As a parent, you anticipate the days of dealing with teenager who is experiencing mood swings. I have a sixteen-year-old daughter who is constantly going through mood swings. One minute her and I will be engaged in a nice conversation and literally the next minute I am her worst enemy. There is no way a parent can prepare themselves for what they will deal with when it comes to being a parent to a teenager. When a teenager is experiencing a mood swing we tend to refer to as being hormonal changes. I wanted to explore the option of it being more related to sleep patterns and deprivation. In a research study found in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine (July, 2010), it was learned that a teenager who gets less than nine hours of sleep is defined as being sleep deprived.
It was found that a biological change occurred which involved a shift in the teenager’s circadian rhythms. When there is a shift in this rhythm it calls for later wake times. It was discovered that teenagers have a hard time falling asleep before 2300, which in turn, shift their waking to around 0800.
In another study, researchers took two groups and conducted an experiment of sleep deprivation on the emotional center of the brain which is responsible for mood swings. One group of young students were allowed a good night’s sleep and another group stayed awake for 35 hours. An MRI, magnetic renosance image, was conducted on all students of both groups. It was found that the group who had a good night’s rest showed normal imaging results. The group that had been sleep deprived showed to have a hyperactive brain response within the emotional center of their brains. This is the same result you find in people with