Altered insular functional connectivity correlates to impaired vigilant attention after sleep deprivation: A resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Weiwei Fu; Cimin Dai; Jie Chen; Letong Wang; Tao Song; Ziyi Peng; Mengmeng Xu; Lin Xu; Yuguo Tang; Yongcong Shao

doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.889009

Altered insular functional connectivity correlates to impaired vigilant attention after sleep deprivation: A resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Front Neurosci. 2022 Jul 26:16:889009. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.889009. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Weiwei Fu^{1

2}, Cimin Dai³, Jie Chen³, Letong Wang³, Tao Song³, Ziyi Peng³, Mengmeng Xu³, Lin Xu³, Yuguo Tang^{1

2}, Yongcong Shao^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ School of Biomedical Engineering (Suzhou), Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
² Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, China.
³ School of Psychology, Beijing Sport University, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Objectives: This study used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scans to assess the dominant effects of 36 h total sleep deprivation (TSD) on vigilant attention and changes in the resting-state network.

Materials and methods: Twenty-two healthy college students were enrolled in this study. Participants underwent two rs-fMRI scans, once in rested wakefulness (RW) and once after 36 h of TSD. We used psychomotor vigilance tasks (PVT) to measure vigilant attention. The region-of-interest to region-of-interest correlation was employed to analyze the relationship within the salience network (SN) and between other networks after 36 h of TSD. Furthermore, Pearson's correlation analysis investigated the relationship between altered insular functional connectivity and PVT performance.

Results: After 36 h of TSD, participants showed significantly decreased vigilant attention. Additionally, TSD induced decreased functional connectivity between the visual and parietal regions, whereas, a significant increase was observed between the anterior cingulate cortex and insula. Moreover, changes in functional connectivity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula showed a significant positive correlation with the response time to PVT.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that 36 h of TSD impaired vigilant visual attention, resulting in slower reaction times. The decrease in visual-parietal functional connectivity may be related to the decrease in the reception of information in the brain. Enhanced functional connectivity of the anterior cingulate cortex with the insula revealed that the brain network compensation occurs mainly in executive function.

Keywords: functional connectivity; insula; psychomotor vigilance task; resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging; sleep deprivation.