bioRxiv · 10.64898/2026.03.03.709353
Depression symptoms are associated with affective neural processing during sleep and rest
Abstract
Sleep supports offline information processing and is essential for cognitive and emotional functioning. Abnormal sleep patterns are a hallmark of affective disorders. We hypothesized that affective symptoms occur with maladaptive neural processing during offline periods. To test this idea, we used multivariate EEG decoding with cross-state classification. A model trained on EEG data acquired while participants (N = 52) viewed emotional images was used to classify stimulus valence. Applying this model to data collected during a nap revealed the re-emergence of affective neural patterns. Critically, offline reinstatement of patterns reflecting negatively valenced processing predicted greater depressive symptoms across participants. These associations reflected both cognitive-affective and somatic-performance depression subscales, and they generalized across sleep stages and wakeful rest. The finding that offline neural information processing is linked with emotional well-being supports a model whereby maladaptive negative biases can be perpetuated during rest, potentially shaping the progression of affective disorders.
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Lin, X., Lew, N. J., Cho, M., Paller, K. A., Schechtman, E.. 2026-03-05. Depression symptoms are associated with affective neural processing during sleep and rest. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.03.709353
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