Functional Connectivity Abnormalities of Brain Regions With Structural Deficits in Primary Insomnia Patients

Dongdong Xie; He Qin; Fang Dong; XianFu Wang; Chang Liu; Ting Xue; Yifu Hao; Bo Liu; Kai Yuan; Dahua Yu

doi:10.3389/fnins.2020.00566

Functional Connectivity Abnormalities of Brain Regions With Structural Deficits in Primary Insomnia Patients

Front Neurosci. 2020 Jun 26:14:566. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00566. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Dongdong Xie¹, He Qin², Fang Dong¹, XianFu Wang¹, Chang Liu¹, Ting Xue¹, Yifu Hao³, Bo Liu⁴, Kai Yuan^{1

5}, Dahua Yu¹

Affiliations

¹ Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Image Processing, School of Information Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, China.
² Department of Neurology, Affiliated Hospital of Inner Mongolia University for the Nationalities, Tongliao, China.
³ School of Life Science and Medicine Bioinformatics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China.
⁴ Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Baotou Medical College, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, China.
⁵ Life Sciences Research Center, School of Life Sciences and Technology, Xidian University, Xi'an, China.

Abstract

Objectives: The present study examined the abnormal resting state functional connections (RSFCs) in structural deficit brain regions of primary insomnia (PI) patients.

Methods: Thirty-three PI patients and 38 well-matched healthy controls participated in our study. We used voxel-based morphometry and RSFC to study functional connectivity abnormalities of brain regions with structural deficits in PI patients.

Results: PI patients showed decreased gray matter (GM) volume in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), bilateral middle frontal gyrus (MFC), right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and left inferior temporal gyrus. Gray matter volume in the right MFC negatively correlated with Self-Rating Scale of Sleep (SRSS) scores, and GM volume in the right IFG negatively correlated with SRSS and Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) scores. Therefore, the right MFC and right IFG were selected as regions of interest for RSFC analysis. PI patients had weakened RSFC between the right inferior parietal gyrus (IPC) and the right MFC compared to the healthy controls and between the left OFC and right IFG. The RSFC between the right MFC and right IPC negatively correlated with SRSS scores. The RSFC between the right IFG and left OFC negatively correlated with SRSS, ISI, SAS, and SDS scores.

Conclusions: The present study found structural changes in the right MFC and right IFG accompanied by RSFC changes. This finding may provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms of PI via combining structural and functional modality information.

Keywords: inferior frontal gyrus; middle frontal gyrus; primary insomnia; resting state functional connectivity; voxel-based morphometry (VBM).