Abstract
Sleep spindles have been implicated in sleep protection, depression and anxiety. However, spindle-related brain imaging mechanism underpinning the deficient sleep protection and emotional regulation in insomnia disorder (ID) remains elusive. The aim of the current study is to investigate the relationship between spindle-related brain activations and sleep quality, symptoms of depression and anxiety in patients with ID. Participants (n = 46, 28 females, 18–60 years) were recruited through advertisements including 16 with ID, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, and 30 matched controls. Group differences in spindle-related brain activations were analyzed using multimodality data acquired with simultaneous electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging during sleep. Compared with controls, patients with ID showed significantly decreased bilateral spindle-related brain activations in the cingulate gyrus (familywise error corrected p ˂ 0.05, cluster size 4401 mm3). Activations in the cingulate gyrus were negatively correlated with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores (r = -0.404, p = 0.005) and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale scores (r = -0.364, p = 0.013), in the pooled sample. These findings underscore the key role of spindle-related brain activations in the cingulate gyrus in subjective sleep quality and emotional regulation in ID.
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13 December 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-021-00618-1
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We thank the National Center for Protein Sciences at Peking University in Beijing, China, for assistance with MRI data acquisition and data analysis.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81771429, 81971235, 81871427, 81800482, 81671765, 81727808, 81790650) and the Capital’s Funds for Health Improvement and Research (2018–1- 4111).
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Conception and study design (Hongqiang Sun, Jia-Hong Gao, Qihong Zou and Yan Shao), Data collection or acquisition (Yan Shao, Guangyuan Zou, Xuejiao Gao, Serik Tabarak, Ping Yao, Jiayi Liu, Yuezhen Li, Shuqin Zhou, Jing Xu, Wen Pan and Mengying Ma), Statistical analysis (Yan Shao, Guangyuan Zou, Yanping Bao and Yundong Ma), Interpretation of results (Yan Shao, Guangyuan Zou and Qihong Zou), Drafting the manuscript work or revising it critically for important intellectual content (Yan Shao, Guangyuan Zou, Jie Chen, Nana Xiong, Qiqing Sun, Qihong Zou and Hongqiang Sun), Approval of final version to be published and agreement to be accountable for the integrity and accuracy of all aspects of the work (All authors).
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Shao, Y., Zou, G., Tabarak, S. et al. Spindle-related brain activation in patients with insomnia disorder: An EEG-fMRI study. Brain Imaging and Behavior 16, 659–670 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-021-00544-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-021-00544-2