Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain in patients with insomnia: a prospective study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Insomnia is one of the most common sleep disorders, the interest of scientists in the occurrence and pathophysiology of insomnia is growing every year. In particular, the brain connectome and its changes in sleep disorders are being actively studied based on the data of resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging.OBJECTIVE: The study is to assess changes in brain connectomes in patients with chronic insomnia using functional magnetic resonance imaging.MATERIALS AND METHODS: 53 people took part in the study, of which 34 patients who applied for a somnologist’s appointment at the Almazov National Research Medical Center of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation were diagnosed with chronic insomnia, confirmed by polysomnography. All participants of the study had an MRI of the brain on tomographs with a magnetic field induction force of 3.0 Tl at two time points.Statistics: Statistical analysis of MRI data was performed using MathLab 2018a, CONN v1.7. Descriptive statistics, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov criterion were used to process the materials, depending on the characteristics of the data, the MannWhitney U-criterion and Pearson Chi-squared were used to analyze demographic data.RESULTS: The study, neuroimaging markers of insomnia were identified and changes in the functional networks of the brain were described in patients with insomnia and a group of healthy volunteers at different time points.DISCUSSION: The obtained functional data demonstrate ambiguous results. Both an increase and a decrease in the functional connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex with the structures of the visual analyzer, an increase in functional connections with the temporal pole, in particular with the hippocampus, is determined, which indicates changes in the consolidation of visually encoded information. The relative limitation in this study can be considered the heterogeneity of the age composition of the group.CONCLUSSION: Resting state functional MRI of the brain is a key neuroimaging method in determining the functional connections of the brain in patients with sleep disorders, which allows us to establish a impairment of functional interaction between brain structures involved in the processes of falling asleep and maintaining sleep.