Plasticity and Susceptibility of Brain Morphometry Alterations to Insufficient Sleep

Abstract

Sleep is less frequently studied using imaging techniques than neurological and psychiatric disorders. Whether and how acute and chronic sleep loss affect brain morphology remain largely unknown. We used voxel-based morphology method to study brain structural changes in healthy subjects over multiple time points during sleep deprivation (SD) status and in patients with chronic insomnia. We found that prolonged acute SD together with one night sleep recovery exhibits accumulative atrophic effect and recovering plasticity on brain morphology, in line with behavioral changes on attentional tasks. Furthermore, acute SD and chronic insomnia exhibit distinct morphological changes of gray matter volume (GMV) but they also share overlapping GMV changes. The altered GMV may provide structural basis for attention and memory impairments following sleep loss.