Longitudinal Co-trajectories of Neural Dynamics Underlying Sleep and Depression
Poster No:
2092
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Mohamed Abdelhack1, Rajith Wickramatunga2, Daniel Felsky2
Institutions:
1Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, Toronto, ON, 2Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Relationships between neural signatures of sleep and depression are complex, with conflicting observations such as depression being associated with both insomnia and hypersomnia (Nutt, Wilson & Patterson 2008), and sleep deprivation acting as an effective antidepressant (Boland et al. 2017). We recently found counterintuitive non-linear associations between resting and task-engaged neural states that may partially explain this (Abdelhack et al. 2023), where resting-state associations of insomnia and depression symptoms were positively correlated for longer sleepers (>6.8 hours). For participants sleeping less than 6.8 hours, the correlation for insomnia and sleep duration became negative, while for depressive symptoms, correlation diminished to zero. Additionally, neural signatures of insomnia and depressive symptoms were associated with brain-wide hyperconnectivity at rest but hypoconnectivity during task (Abdelhack et al. 2023). These results show that participants with insomnia and neural patterns resembling longer sleep are more likely to have accompanying depressive symptoms. This raises important questions of causation between insomnia, depression, and functional connectivity.
Methods:
In the present study, we address this question by investigating temporal trajectories of imaging-derived phenotypes with repeated fMRI scans paired with measures of sleep and depression in a subset of the UK Biobank participants who underwent two brain scans (N=1188). We measured the association between changes in imaging-derived phenotypes between two scans (for each task-based and resting state paradigms) and the change in sleep and depression phenotypes reported between each scan session (Figure 1).
Results:
We ran a brain-wide association analysis of resting state functional connectivity with change in sleep and depression phenotypes (Figure 2), which revealed a positive correlation between change in frequency of insomnia and sleep duration (Figure 2B; r=0.216; p=0.0016), similar to our previous cross-sectional analysis (Abdelhack et al. 2023). However, the same neural associations of change in depression symptoms and sleep duration were not significantly correlated (Figure 2A). Additionally, in the task-based condition, we investigated the associations of representational connectivity measures, and found brain-wide hypoconnectivity associated with change in insomnia frequency but not depression symptoms (Figure 2C). A preliminary sample of resting-state seed-based correlation associations revealed very slight hyperconnectivity associations with insomnia (Figure 2D).
Conclusions:
Given that longitudinal data reproduced only the results from the cross-sectional analysis for insomnia, they support the notion of insomnia and not depression as a precursor for the hyperarousal state where neural dynamics resemble those of rested wakefulness. This also suggests a possible causal relationship between insomnia and functional brain changes which could subsequently lead to depressive symptoms. This data-driven hypothesis extracted from the general population could guide new trials in clinical populations and ultimately inform new and more effective diagnoses and interventions for both depression and insomnia.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 2
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI)
fMRI Connectivity and Network Modeling
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Sleep and Wakefulness 1
Keywords:
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Sleep
Other - insomnia; depression; connectivity
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel? NOTE: Any human subjects studies without IRB approval will be automatically rejected.
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Provide references using APA citation style.
Boland, E. M., Rao, H., Dinges, D. F., Smith, R. V., Goel, N., Detre, J. A., ... & Gehrman, P. R. (2017). Meta-analysis of the antidepressant effects of acute sleep deprivation. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 78(8), 893.
Abdelhack, M., Zhukovsky, P., Milic, M., Harita, S., Wainberg, M., Tripathy, S. J., ... & Felsky, D. (2023). Opposing brain signatures of sleep in task-based and resting-state conditions. Nature Communications, 14(1), 7927.