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Reduced left lateralized functional connectivity of the thalamic subregions between short-term and chronic insomnia disorder

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Abstract

The purpose of the study was to systematically investigate the structural and functional abnormalities in the subregions of the thalamus and to examine their clinical relevance in patients with short-term and chronic insomnia disorder (ID). Thirty-four patients with short-term ID, 41 patients with chronic ID, and 46 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. Grey matter volume and seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) were compared for each thalamic subregion (bilateral cTtha, lPFtha, mPFtha, mPMtha, Otha, Pptha, rTtha, and Stha) between the three groups. Spearman’s correlation was used to estimate the associations between thalamic alterations and clinical variables. Compared with the HCs and chronic ID group, the short-term ID group exhibited lower RSFC of the left cTtha, lPFtha, Otha and Pptha with the bilateral caudate. In addition, the short-term ID group exhibited lower RSFC between the left mPFtha and left caudate in comparison with the other two groups. Convergent RSFC alterations were found in the left cTtha and Otha with the right parahippocampal gyrus in both ID groups. Moreover, a positive correlation was found for the left Otha–caudate RSFC with the Epworth sleepiness scale scores (r = 0.340, P = 0.040). Our findings suggest shared and unique RSFC alterations of certain thalamic subregions with paralimbic regions between short-term and chronic ID. These findings have implications for understanding common and specific pathophysiology of different types of ID.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the patients and volunteers for participating in this study. Also, the authors are highly grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their significant and constructive comments and suggestions, which greatly improved the article.

Funding

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation for Young Scientists of China (grant number: 82001792), National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 81771807), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (grant number: 2017A020215077) and the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou, China (grant number: 201804010448).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Imaging, Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, No.466 Road XinGang, Guangzhou, 510317, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaofen Ma, Shishun Fu, Mengchen Liu, Guihua Jiang & Junzhang Tian

  2. Department of Neurology, Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, No.466 Road XinGang, Guangzhou, 510317, People’s Republic of China

    Guang Xu

  3. Department of Medical Imaging Center, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medial University, Guangzhou, 510515, People’s Republic of China

    Yikai Xu

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  1. Xiaofen Ma
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Correspondence to Junzhang Tian.

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This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, and all participants completed informed written consent prior to their participation in this study.

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Ma, X., Fu, S., Xu, G. et al. Reduced left lateralized functional connectivity of the thalamic subregions between short-term and chronic insomnia disorder. Sleep Biol. Rhythms 20, 229–237 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41105-021-00362-5

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