Effects of one night of sleep deprivation on whole brain intrinsic connectivity distribution using a graph theory neuroimaging approach

Neuroimaging studies have revealed disturbances in brain functional connectivity (FC) after one night of sleep deprivation (SD). These researches explored the alterations of FC using classical regions of interest (ROI)-based analysis or functional connectivity density. However, these methods need for a priori information about the selected ROIs and a specific correlation threshold to define a connection between two ROIs or voxels, which may bring inconsistent results. In the present study, we adopted a data-driven, whole brain voxel-based graph-theoretical approach, intrinsic connectivity distribution (ICD) analysis, to examine changes of brain connectivity after SD in 52 normal young subjects without any prior knowledge. The cross-hemisphere ICD (ch-ICD) analysis was also performed to discover the effect of SD on cerebral lateralization. We found that sleep-deprived subjects showed significant reduced ICD in default mode network (DMN) and limbic network, and increased ICD in sensorimotor network. Furthermore, after SD, the ICD in the right precuneus showed significant correlation with psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) performance following the stepwise regression analysis after Bonferroni correction (ICD = 0.43 - 0.62∗10 % fast reaction time + 0.31∗the standard deviation of reaction time, p = 0.0012). Follow-up seed-based FC analyses in the right precuneus revealed decreased FC to regions in DMN, visual network, ventral attentional network and frontal-parietal network. Nevertheless, no striking difference of ch-ICD was found following SD. In conclusion, these findings suggested that DMN, especially precuneus may be hubs of FC disturbances associated with vigilance after SD, and may provide new insights into the intervention for SD.