Your Brain Has Two Voices. At 3AM, The Dark Voice Takes Over

Annnnnd It's 3am Again... You were fine at midnight, so why is your brain only now repalying every single mistake you've ever made, and why are you contemplating the darkest, most important aspects of your life? In this video, we explore the neuroscience behind why your worst thoughts come at night, through the explanation of two competing brain networks: The Storyteller, your Default Mode Network The Editor, your Prefrontal Cortex. Hint: At night, the Editor falls asleep before the Storyteller does! #psychology #overthinking #anxiety #3am #neuroscience #mentalhealth #darkpsychology New Episodes Wednesday 3pm EST. REFERENCES: 1. The Default Mode Network — the brain system that activates when you're not focused on a task (your "Storyteller") Buckner, R.L., Andrews-Hanna, J.R., & Schacter, D.L. (2008). "The Brain's Default Network." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124(1), 1–38. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18400... 2. Cortisol levels spike sharply between 2–4am as part of the Cortisol Awakening Response — your body floods with stress hormones before you even wake up Pruessner, J.C. et al. (1997). "Free cortisol levels after awakening: A reliable biological marker for the assessment of adrenocortical activity." Life Sciences, 61(26), 2539–2549. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9416776/ 3. Humans are hardwired to give greater weight to negative events, threats, and mistakes — the negativity bias Rozin, P. & Royzman, E.B. (2001). "Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion." Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(4), 296–320. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1... 4. Trying to suppress a thought makes it come back stronger — Ironic Process Theory explains why "just stop thinking about it" backfires Wegner, D.M. (1994). "Ironic processes of mental control." Psychological Review, 101(1), 34–52. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8121959/ 5. Writing about anxious thoughts reduces their emotional intensity — externalising worries breaks the overthinking loop Pennebaker, J.W. (1997). "Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process." Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1... 6. Sleep deprivation causes a 60% increase in amygdala reactivity to negative stimuli — your brain's emotional alarm system overreacts when you're tired Yoo, S.S. et al. (2007). "The human emotional brain without sleep — a prefrontal amygdala disconnect." Current Biology, 17(20), R877–R878. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17956...