Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Feb 1:226:117547.
doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117547. Epub 2020 Nov 11.

Cortical gradients of functional connectivity are robust to state-dependent changes following sleep deprivation

Nathan Cross  1 , Casey Paquola  2 , Florence B Pomares  3 , Aurore A Perrault  3 , Aude Jegou  4 , Alex Nguyen  5 , Umit Aydin  6 , Boris C Bernhardt  2 , Christophe Grova  7 , Thien Thanh Dang-Vu  8
Affiliations
Free article

Cortical gradients of functional connectivity are robust to state-dependent changes following sleep deprivation

Nathan Cross et al. Neuroimage. .
Free article

Abstract

Sleep deprivation leads to significant impairments in cognitive performance and changes to the interactions between large scale cortical networks, yet the hierarchical organization of cortical activity across states is still being explored. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess activations and connectivity during cognitive tasks in 20 healthy young adults, during three states: (i) following a normal night of sleep, (ii) following 24hr of total sleep deprivation, and (iii) after a morning recovery nap. Situating cortical activity during cognitive tasks along hierarchical organizing gradients based upon similarity of functional connectivity patterns, we found that regional variations in task-activations were captured by an axis differentiating areas involved in executive control from default mode regions and paralimbic cortex. After global signal regression, the range of functional differentiation along this axis at baseline was significantly related to decline in working memory performance (2-back task) following sleep deprivation, as well as the extent of recovery in performance following a nap. The relative positions of cortical regions within gradients did not significantly change across states, except for a lesser differentiation of the visual system and increased coupling of the posterior cingulate cortex with executive control areas after sleep deprivation. This was despite a widespread increase in the magnitude of functional connectivity across the cortex following sleep deprivation. Cortical gradients of functional differentiation thus appear relatively insensitive to state-dependent changes following sleep deprivation and recovery, suggesting that there are no large-scale changes in cortical functional organization across vigilance states. Certain features of particular gradient axes may be informative for the extent of decline in performance on more complex tasks following sleep deprivation, and could be beneficial over traditional voxel- or parcel-based approaches in identifying realtionships between state-dependent brain activity and behavior.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources