Age-related abnormalities of thalamic shape and dynamic functional connectivity after three hours of sleep restriction

Zhiliang Long; Jia Zhao; Danni Chen; Xu Lei

doi:10.7717/peerj.10751

Age-related abnormalities of thalamic shape and dynamic functional connectivity after three hours of sleep restriction

PeerJ. 2021 Jan 26:9:e10751. doi: 10.7717/peerj.10751. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Zhiliang Long^{1

2}, Jia Zhao¹, Danni Chen¹, Xu Lei^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Sleep and NeuroImaging Center, Faculty of Psychology, University of the Southwest, Chongqing, China.
² Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Southwest University), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China.

Abstract

Background: Previous neuroimaging studies have detected abnormal activation and intrinsic functional connectivity of the thalamus after total sleep deprivation. However, very few studies have investigated age-related changes in the dynamic functional connectivity of the thalamus and the abnormalities in the thalamic shape following partial sleep deprivation.

Methods: Fifty-five participants consisting of 23 old adults (mean age: 68.8 years) and 32 young adults (mean age: 23.5 years) were included in current study. A vertex-based shape analysis and a dynamic functional connectivity analysis were used to evaluate the age-dependent structural and functional abnormalities after three hours of sleep restriction.

Results: Shape analysis revealed the significant main effect of deprivation with local atrophy in the left thalamus. In addition, we observed a significant age deprivation interaction effect with reduced variability of functional connectivity between the left thalamus and the left superior parietal cortex following sleep restriction. This reduction was found only in young adults. Moreover, a significantly negative linear correlation was observed between the insomnia severity index and the changes of variability (post-deprivation minus pre-deprivation) in the functional connectivity of the left thalamus with the left superior parietal cortex.

Conclusions: The results indicated that three hours of sleep restriction could affect both the thalamic structure and its functional dynamics. They also highlighted the role of age in studies of sleep deprivation.

Keywords: Aging; Functional connectivity variability; Sleep loss; Subcortical shape; Thalamus.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81901725), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. SWU118004). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.