Evidence for cortical structural plasticity in humans after a day of waking and sleep deprivation

Abstract

Sleep is an evolutionarily conserved process required for human health and functioning. Insufficient sleep causes impairments across cognitive domains, and sleep deprivation can have rapid antidepressive effects in mood disorders. However, the neurobiological effects of waking and sleep are not well understood. Recently, animal studies indicated that waking and sleep are associated with substantial cortical structural plasticity. Here, we hypothesized that structural plasticity can be observed after a day of waking and sleep deprivation in the human cerebral cortex. To test this hypothesis, 61 healthy adult males underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at three time points: in the morning after a regular night's sleep, the evening of the same day, and the next morning, either after total sleep deprivation (N=41) or a night of sleep (N=20). We found significantly increased right prefrontal cortical thickness from morning to evening across all participants. In addition, pairwise comparisons in the deprived group between the two morning scans showed significant thinning of mainly bilateral medial parietal cortices after 23h of sleep deprivation, including the precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex. However, there were no significant group (sleep vs. sleep deprived group) by time interactions and we can therefore not rule out that other mechanisms than sleep deprivation per se underlie the bilateral medial parietal cortical thinning observed in the deprived group. Nonetheless, these cortices are thought to subserve wakefulness, are among the brain regions with highest metabolic rate during wake, and are considered some of the most sensitive cortical regions to a variety of insults. Furthermore, greater thinning within the left medial parietal cluster was associated with increased sleepiness after sleep deprivation. Together, these findings add to a growing body of data showing rapid structural plasticity within the human cerebral cortex detectable with MRI. Further studies are needed to clarify whether cortical thinning is one neural substrate of sleepiness after sleep deprivation.

High-Frequency Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Could Improve Impaired Working Memory Induced by Sleep Deprivation

“…Therefore, the impairment of behavioral performance after SD could be actually detected by using neuroimaging methods. Also, this evidence from functional neuroimaging was further proved in a structural imaging study which observed a thinned cortical thickness precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex after SD [48].…”

Perspectives in affective disorders: Clocks and sleep

“…Notwithstanding the impairment in neuropsychological tests targeting cortical functions, possibly due to saturation and altered signal/noise ratio associated with acute imbalance of circadian synaptic homeostasis, these experiments consistently suggest that one night of SD increases cortical excitability and synaptic strength in healthy humans. Similarly, there is new evidence for neuroplasticity of such an extent as to be associated with an increase of prefrontal cortical brain volumes detected in structural MRI after SD in healthy humans (Elvsashagen et al., ).…”

Cerebral blood flow changes after a day of wake, sleep, and sleep deprivation

“…Forty right-handed, healthy, adult male volunteers were included. Functional and structural MRI data from overlapping samples were previously investigated [34][35][36] . We included males only, in order to exclude potential variability due to hormonal cycles.…”