Abstract
Sleep and maintenance of brain structure are essential for the continuity of a person’s cognitive/mental health. Interestingly, whether normal structural maintenance of the brain and sleep continuously interact in some way over day–week–month times has never been assessed at an individual-person level. This study used unconventional microlongitudinal sampling, structural magnetic resonance imaging, and n-of-1 analyses to assess normal interactions between fluctuations in the structural maintenance of cerebral cortical thickness and sleep duration for day, week, and multi-week intervals over a 6-month period in a healthy adult man. Correlation and time series analyses provided indications of “if–then,” i.e., “if” this preceded “then” this followed, sleep-to-thickness maintenance and thickness maintenance-to-sleep bidirectional inverse interactions. Inverse interaction patterns were characterized by concepts of graded influences across nights, bilaterally positive relationships, continuity across successive weeks, and longer delayed/prolonged effects in the thickness maintenance-to-sleep than sleep-to-thickness maintenance direction. These interactions are proposed to involve normal circadian/allostatic/homeostatic mechanisms that continuously influence, and are influenced by, cortical substrate remodeling/turnover and sleep/wake cycle. Understanding interactions of individual person “-omics” is becoming a central interest in precision medicine research. The present n-of-1 findings contribute to this interest and have implications for precision medicine research use of a person’s cortical structural and sleep “-omics” to optimize the continuous maintenance of that individual’s cortical structure, sleep, and cognitive/mental health.
Highlights
There is growing interest in precision medicine research into how to optimize brain and body maintenance at an individual-person level (McEwen and Getz, 2013; Collins and Varmus, 2015; Insel and Cuthbert, 2015; Cole, 2018; Goetz and Schork, 2018; Huang and Hood, 2019)
Using data from the microlongitudinal time series in our above studied individual, where cortical thickness maintenance was repeatedly assessed at weekly intervals for 6 months, three questions were addressed: (1) Are fluctuations in sleep duration at earlier times related to maintenance of cortical thickness at later times? (2) Are fluctuations in maintenance of cortical thickness at earlier times related to sleep duration at later times? (3) Do cortical thickness maintenance and sleep duration interact bidirectionally over short intervals?
This is a first exploration into the interaction of sleep and cortical structural maintenance from an individual person, microlongitudinal perspective
Summary
There is growing interest in precision medicine research into how to optimize brain and body maintenance at an individual-person level (McEwen and Getz, 2013; Collins and Varmus, 2015; Insel and Cuthbert, 2015; Cole, 2018; Goetz and Schork, 2018; Huang and Hood, 2019). This has led to unconventional work using microlongitudinal time series measures. Further n-of-1 “-omics” research is likely forthcoming and justified
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