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

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • 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.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Neuroscience
Volume43
Issue number12
Pages (from-to)2168-2177
Number of pages10
ISSN0270-6474
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 the authors.

    Research areas

  • brain age, sleep deprivation, T1 MRI

ID: 362750103