Sleep as a window to treat affective disorders

Sleep disturbances represent a core symptom in affective disorders. While healthy sleep patterns help to regulate emotions and consolidate memories, disturbed sleep participates in the genesis and maintenance of mental illnesses. As the electrophysiological mechanisms underlying restorative sleep start to be uncovered, exciting opportunities for direct applications arise. Here we discuss the first evidence on manipulation of emotional processing and memories during sleep. In particular, we examine the advantage of targeted memory reactivation procedures, especially when phase-locked to slow oscillations dynamics, in achieving such manipulations. Extrapolating from this knowledge, we propose sleep-based interventions that could provide new therapeutic avenues for the treatment of maladaptive emotional memories, as in phobias, addictions or PTSD.