Arousal threshold reveals novel neural markers of sleep depth independently from the conventional sleep stages.
Dante Picchioni, Fan Nils Yang, Jacco A de Zwart, Yicun Wang, Hendrik Mandelkow, Pinar S ��zbay, Gang Chen, Paul A Taylor, Niki Lam, Miranda G Chappel-Farley, Catie Chang, Jiaen Liu, Peter van Gelderen, Jeff H Duyn
Author Information
Dante Picchioni: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Fan Nils Yang: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Jacco A de Zwart: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Yicun Wang: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Hendrik Mandelkow: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Pinar S ��zbay: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Gang Chen: Scientific and Statistical Computing Core, National Institute of Mental Health, USA.
Paul A Taylor: Scientific and Statistical Computing Core, National Institute of Mental Health, USA.
Niki Lam: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Miranda G Chappel-Farley: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Catie Chang: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Jiaen Liu: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Peter van Gelderen: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Jeff H Duyn: Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, USA.
Reports of sleep-specific brain activity patterns have been constrained by assessing brain function as it related to the conventional polysomnographic sleep stages. This limits the variety of sleep states and underlying activity patterns that one can discover. The current study used all-night functional MRI sleep data and defined sleep behaviorally with auditory arousal threshold (AAT) to characterize sleep depth better by searching for novel neural markers of sleep depth that are neuroanatomically localized and temporally unrelated to the conventional stages. Functional correlation values calculated in a four-min time window immediately before the determination of AAT were entered into a linear mixed effects model, allowing multiple arousals across the night per subject into the analysis, and compared to models with sleep stage to determine the unique relationships with AAT. These unique relationships were for thalamocerebellar correlations, the relationship between the right language network and the right "default-mode network dorsal medial prefrontal cortex subsystem," and the relationship between thalamus and ventral attention network. These novel neural markers of sleep depth would have remained undiscovered if the data were merely analyzed with the conventional sleep stages.
