Association of naturally occurring sleep loss with reduced amygdala resting-state functional connectivity following psychosocial stress

Description: Chronic sleep loss is a risk factor for a variety of both somatic and mental health issues. When subjected to sleep loss, the brain becomes vulnerable to critical alterations in cognitive and emotional processing. In our study, we examined the effect of psychosocial stress on amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) in subjects with cumulative sleep loss across 7 days. For this purpose, forty-five healthy male subjects completed a one-week sleep diary and underwent resting- state scans before and after taking part in the ScanSTRESS paradigm, which was especially developed to induce social stress within the environment of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Sleep loss was negatively associated with seed-based left amygdala RSFC to the medial prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, posterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. That is, subjects with higher amounts of sleep loss showed reduced left amygdala RSFC after social stress induction to cortical regions, forming main nodes of the brain’s default mode network, salience network, and central executive network. Our results shed light on mechanisms of neural stress response as well as on processes potentially underlying the development of psychopathology in the context of naturally occurring sleep deprivation.

Related article: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2020.104585