Multimodal Neuroimaging Study Of Sleep Deprivation On Inhibition Control

Sleep deprivation is associated with social,financial,and health problems,in large measure because it produces impaired cognitive performance due to increased sleep propensity and instability of waking neurobehavioral function.Current research shows that high cognitive abilities,including vigilant,executive attention,working memory,are susceptible to sleep deprivation,and there are individual differences in the impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive ability.Inhibition control is one of the core components of cognitive control and is the ability to quickly cancel planned or ongoing behavior.However,the effect of sleep deprivation on the neural mechanisms of inhibition control is poorly understood.In this study,Stop signal task(SST)was used to evaluate inhibition control ability.Magnetic resonance imaging was used to study the effect of 24-hour sleep deprivation on brain activation and the neural mechanism that caused individual differences in control ability.Firstly,this study investigated the changes in neural mechanisms that inhibition control after 24-hour sleep deprivation in 20 healthy subjects.Behavioral results showed a significant increase in the stop signal reaction time(SSRT)after sleep deprivation,and the inhibitory control ability was impaired.Neuroimaging results showed after sleep deprivation,the activation intensity decreased in the inferior frontal gyrus,supplementary motor area,subthalamic nucleus,insula and vision-related areas such as fusiform gyrus,occipital cortex,and lingual gyrus.Among them,the inferior frontal gyrus,supplementary motor area,subthalamic nucleus and insula are the core components of "stopping network." In rested wakefulness,the left inferior frontal gyrus,left subthalamic nucleus,right hippocampus,right lingual gyrus,bilateral fusiform gyrus and SSRT were significantly negatively correlated.The stronger the activation of these regions,the smaller the SSRT and the better the inhibition control ability.Among them,the left inferior frontal gyrus contribution was the largest.After sleep deprivation,in the right hemisphere,the middle frontal gyrus,inferior frontal gyrus,and the left lingual gyrus were significantly negatively correlated with SSRT,and the contribution of the right inferior frontal gyrus was the largest.These findings suggest that sleep deprivation reduced the activation of brain regions during inhibition control and alters the correlation between activation of brain regions and SSRT.Secondly,in this study,participants were equally divided into groups that inhibition control were susceptible to sleep deprivation(vulnerable group)and those were not susceptible to sleep deprivation(resilient group),based on the proportion of SSRT changes after sleep deprivation in rested wakefulness to explore individual differences in the effects of sleep deprivation on inhibition of control.Behavioral results showed the inhibition control ability of the resilient group was hardly affected by sleep deprivation.However,after 24-hour sleep deprivation in the vulnerable group,the SSRT increased significantly,and the inhibitory control ability was impaired.Neuroimaging results showed that the activation intensity in the left medial superior frontal,right medial orbital frontal and left superior temporal gyrus were easily affected by sleep deprivation and grouping,and in the rested wakefulness,there was a significant difference in the activation intensity of these three brain regions in the resilient group and vulnerable group.In the rested wakefulness,activation on the left medial superior frontal could well distinguished the resilient group from the vulnerable group.These studies showed that the vulnerable group had better control of inhibition in the rested wakefulness,but it did not maintain the inhibition control ability well after sleep deprivation.The resilient group was just the opposite.The main reason for this phenomenon was the activation difference between the resilient group and the vulnerable group in the left medial superior frontal and right medial orbital frontal and left superior temporal gyrus.Finally,because individual differences in sleep deprivation vulnerability are traits,and in the resting state the functional connections or structural images of the brain are like a person's inherent traits,regardless of the activation state of the brain,individuals can be distinguished from a group.Therefore,in the rested wakefulness,we obtained T1 high resolution images of 20 healthy participants.Based on the difference analysis of cerebral cortex thickness between two groups,it was found that there was a significant difference in the left and right hemispheres between the resilient group and vulnerable group.In the right hemisphere,the lateral occipital,postcentral,fusiform,entorhinal,supramarginal area,the cortical thickness of the vulnerable group was higher than the ones of the resilient group.In the posterior cingulate gyrus,middle temporal gyrus,superior parietal,parstriangularis,and the superiortemporal,the cortical thickness of the resilient group was higher than the ones of the vulnerable group.In the left hemisphere of the brain,the cortical thickness values of the vulnerable group in the parsopercularis,precuneus,insula,lateral occipital,and lateralorbitofrontal region were higher than the ones of the resilient group.In the resilient group,the cortex thickness in the superior parietal,rostralanterior cingulare and superior frontal gyrus areas were higher than the ones of the vulnerable group.The average cortical thickness in two groups of different areas were used as a feature.Elastic network regression analysis was used to fit the classification model.Cross-validation was used to validate the classification model.The accuracy of classification of cortical thickness reached 71.6%.Therefore,cortical thickness was an important feature to predict the vulnerability of sleep deprivation.Comprehensive studies that sleep deprivation mainly affected the level of inhibition control of humans through the inferior frontal gyrus.In the rested wakefulness,the vulnerable group had better inhibition control,but was susceptible to sleep deprivation,the resilient group was just the opposite.There was also a significant difference in cortical thickness between the resilient and vulnerable group,further demonstrating the traits of individual differences.