Abnormal dynamic functional connectivity after sleep deprivation from temporal variability perspective

• Published in: Human brain mapping Vol. 43; no. 12; pp. 3824 - 3839
• Main Authors: Sun, Jinbo, Zhao, Rui, He, Zhaoyang, Chang, Mengying, Wang, Fumin, Wei, Wei, Zhang, Xiaodan, Zhu, Yuanqiang, Xi, Yibin, Yang, Xuejuan, Qin, Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken, USA John Wiley & Sons, Inc 15.08.2022
• Subjects: Alzheimer's disease; Brain; Brain architecture; Brain research; Cognition disorders; Disorders; dynamic functional connectivity; Experiments; Functional morphology; Laboratories; Magnetic resonance imaging; Medical imaging; Neural networks; Neuroimaging; Parkinson's disease; psychomotor vigilance test; Questionnaires; Regression analysis; resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging; Schizophrenia; Sleep and wakefulness; Sleep deprivation; temporal variability; Thalamus; Variability; Vigilance; Wakefulness; United States > US; resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging; temporal variability; dynamic functional connectivity; psychomotor vigilance test; sleep deprivation
• ISSN: 1065-9471; 1097-0193; 1097-0193
• DOI: 10.1002/hbm.25886

Sleep deprivation (SD) is very common in modern society and regarded as a potential causal mechanism of several clinical disorders. Previous neuroimaging studies have explored the neural mechanisms of SD using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) from static (comparing two MRI sessions [one after SD and one after resting wakefulness]) and dynamic (using repeated MRI during one night of SD) perspectives. Recent SD researches have focused on the dynamic functional brain organization during the resting‐state scan. Our present study adopted a novel metric (temporal variability), which has been successfully applied to many clinical diseases, to examine the dynamic functional connectivity after SD in 55 normal young subjects. We found that sleep‐deprived subjects showed increased regional‐level temporal variability in large‐scale brain regions, and decreased regional‐level temporal variability in several thalamus subregions. After SD, participants exhibited enhanced intra‐network temporal variability in the default mode network (DMN) and increased inter‐network temporal variability in numerous subnetwork pairs. Furthermore, we found that the inter‐network temporal variability between visual network and DMN was negative related with the slowest 10% respond speed (β = −.42, p = 5.57 × 10−4) of the psychomotor vigilance test after SD following the stepwise regression analysis. In conclusion, our findings suggested that sleep‐deprived subjects showed abnormal dynamic brain functional configuration, which provides new insights into the neural underpinnings of SD and contributes to our understanding of the pathophysiology of clinical disorders. Our present study adopted a novel metric (temporal variability), which has been successfully applied to many clinical diseases, to examine the dynamic functional connectivity after SD. Regional‐level and network‐level temporal variabilities were significantly increased after SD and correlated with the psychomotor vigilance test performance. These findings suggested that sleep‐deprived subjects showed abnormal dynamic brain functional configuration, which provides new insights into the neural underpinnings of SD and contributes to our understanding of the pathophysiology of clinical disorders.