The association between cortical gyrification and sleep in adolescents and young adults

João Paulo Lima Santos; Rebecca Hayes; Peter L Franzen; Tina R Goldstein; Brant P Hasler; Daniel J Buysse; Greg J Siegle; Ronald E Dahl; Erika E Forbes; Cecile D Ladouceur; Dana L McMakin; Neal D Ryan; Jennifer S Silk; Maria Jalbrzikowski; Adriane M Soehner

doi:10.1093/sleep/zsad282

The association between cortical gyrification and sleep in adolescents and young adults

Sleep. 2024 Jan 11;47(1):zsad282. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsad282.

Authors

João Paulo Lima Santos¹, Rebecca Hayes¹, Peter L Franzen¹, Tina R Goldstein¹, Brant P Hasler^{1

2

3}, Daniel J Buysse^{1

3}, Greg J Siegle^{1

3}, Ronald E Dahl⁴, Erika E Forbes^{1

2

3

5}, Cecile D Ladouceur¹, Dana L McMakin⁶, Neal D Ryan¹, Jennifer S Silk², Maria Jalbrzikowski^{7

8}, Adriane M Soehner¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
² Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
³ Department of Clinical and Translational Science Institute, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
⁴ School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁵ Department of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
⁶ Department of Psychology, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA.
⁷ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
⁸ Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.

Abstract

Study objectives: Healthy sleep is important for adolescent neurodevelopment, and relationships between brain structure and sleep can vary in strength over this maturational window. Although cortical gyrification is increasingly considered a useful index for understanding cognitive and emotional outcomes in adolescence, and sleep is also a strong predictor of such outcomes, we know relatively little about associations between cortical gyrification and sleep. We aimed to identify developmentally invariant (stable across age) or developmentally specific (observed only during discrete age intervals) gyrification-sleep relationships in young people.

Methods: A total of 252 Neuroimaging and Pediatric Sleep Databank participants (9-26 years; 58.3% female) completed wrist actigraphy and a structural MRI scan. Local gyrification index (lGI) was estimated for 34 bilateral brain regions. Naturalistic sleep characteristics (duration, timing, continuity, and regularity) were estimated from wrist actigraphy. Regularized regression for feature selection was used to examine gyrification-sleep relationships.

Results: For most brain regions, greater lGI was associated with longer sleep duration, earlier sleep timing, lower variability in sleep regularity, and shorter time awake after sleep onset. lGI in frontoparietal network regions showed associations with sleep patterns that were stable across age. However, in default mode network regions, lGI was only associated with sleep patterns from late childhood through early-to-mid adolescence, a period of vulnerability for mental health disorders.

Conclusions: We detected both developmentally invariant and developmentally specific ties between local gyrification and naturalistic sleep patterns. Default mode network regions may be particularly susceptible to interventions promoting more optimal sleep during childhood and adolescence.

Keywords: actigraphy; cortical folding; cortical gyrification; neuroimaging; sleep.

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Brain
Cerebral Cortex* / diagnostic imaging
Child
Emotions
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Mental Disorders*
Young Adult

Abstract

MeSH terms

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