Total Sleep Deprivation Increases Brain Age Prediction Reversibly in Multisite Samples of Young Healthy Adults

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningfagfællebedømt

  • Congying Chu
  • Sebastian C. Holst
  • Eva Maria Elmenhorst
  • Anna L. Foerges
  • Changhong Li
  • Denise Lange
  • Eva Hennecke
  • Diego M. Baur
  • Simone Beer
  • Felix Hoffstaedter
  • Knudsen, Gitte Moos
  • Daniel Aeschbach
  • Andreas Bauer
  • Hans-Peter Landolt
  • David Elmenhorst

Sleep loss pervasively affects the human brain at multiple levels. Age-related changes in several sleep characteristics indicate that reduced sleep quality is a frequent characteristic of aging. Conversely, sleep disruption may accelerate the aging process, yet it is not known what will happen to the age status of the brain if we can manipulate sleep conditions. To tackle this question, we used an approach of brain age to investigate whether sleep loss would cause age-related changes in the brain. We included MRI data of 134 healthy volunteers (mean chronological age of 25.3 between the age of 19 and 39 years, 42 females/92 males) from five datasets with different sleep conditions. Across three datasets with the condition of total sleep deprivation (.24 h of prolonged wakefulness), we consistently observed that total sleep deprivation increased brain age by 1–2 years regarding the group mean difference with the baseline. Interestingly, after one night of recovery sleep, brain age was not different from baseline. We also demonstrated the associations between the change in brain age after total sleep deprivation and the sleep variables measured during the recovery night. By contrast, brain age was not significantly changed by either acute (3 h time-in-bed for one night) or chronic partial sleep restriction (5 h time-in-bed for five continuous nights). Together, the convergent findings indicate that acute total sleep loss changes brain morphology in an aging-like direction in young participants and that these changes are reversible by recovery sleep.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftJournal of Neuroscience
Vol/bind43
Udgave nummer12
Sider (fra-til)2168-2177
Antal sider10
ISSN0270-6474
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2023

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program through Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant 798131 (S.C.H.), Swiss National Science Foundation Grant 320030_163439, the German Aerospace Center Management Board Young Research Group Leader Program and the Executive Board Member for Space Research and Technology (E.E.), the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee, and the Clinical Research Priority Program Sleep and Health of the University of Zurich. We thank colleagues from the German Aerospace Center Division of Sleep and Human Factors Research, Forschungszentrum Jülich (Institute of Neurocscience and Medicine 2) for support in the conductance of the study and data processing, participants of all datasets, and Dr. Gustav Nilsonne for introducing the data of the Stockholm Sleepy Brain project. C.C. and D.E. thank the 2019 Helmholtz–Office of China Postdoc Program for the involvement of postdoctoral students in bilateral collaboration projects. Sebastian Holst is now a full time employe of Roche. The author declares no competing financial interests. Correspondence should be addressed to David Elmenhorst at d.elmenhorst@fz-juelich.de. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0790-22.2023 Copyright © 2023 the authors

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 the authors.

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