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.
Methods Using Local gyrification index (lGI) of 34 bilateral brain regions and regularized regression for feature selection, we examined gyrification-sleep relationships in the Neuroimaging and Pediatric Sleep databank (252 participants; 9-26 years; 58.3% female) and identified developmentally invariant (stable across age) or developmentally specific (observed only during discrete age intervals) brain-sleep associations. Naturalistic sleep characteristics (duration, timing, continuity, and regularity) were estimated from wrist actigraphy.
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.
Competing Interest Statement
Dr. Goldstein reports receiving royalties from Guilford Press. Dr. Ryan is on the Scientific Advisory Committee for Axsome Therapeutics. Dr. Buysse has served as a paid consultant to Bayer, BeHealth Solutions, Cereve/Ebb Therapeutics, Emmi Solutions, National Cancer Institute, Pear Therapeutics, Philips Respironics, Sleep Number, and Weight Watchers International. He has served as a paid consultant for professional educational programs developed by the American Academy of Physician Assistants and CME Institute and received payment for a professional education program sponsored by Eisai (content developed exclusively by Dr. Buysse). Dr. Buysse is an author of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index Addendum for PTSD (PSQI-A), Brief Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (B-PSQI), Daytime Insomnia Symptoms Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Diary, Insomnia Symptom Questionnaire, and RU_SATED (copyright held by University of Pittsburgh). These instruments have been licensed to commercial entities for fees. He is also co-author of the Consensus Sleep Diary (copyright held by Ryerson University), which is licensed to commercial entities for a fee. Dr. Forbes has received an honorarium from Association for Psychological Science. Dr. Siegle has a patent which is licensed by Apollo Neurosciences for a vibroacoustic intervention that targets among other features, brain mechanisms of sleep quality. Drs. Lima Santos, Jalbrzikowski, Hayes, Franzen, Hasler, Dahl, Ladouceur, McMakin, Silk, and Soehner, have no relevant financial interests, activities, relationships, or affiliations to report.