Resting state functional thalamic connectivity abnormalities in patients with post-stroke sleep apnoea: a pilot...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Sleep Medicine
• Cardiology

Background:

• Sleep apnea is prevalent post-stroke and negatively impacts recovery.
• The underlying mechanisms connecting stroke, sleep apnea, and brain function are not fully understood.
• Altered brain connectivity, particularly in arousal and breathing control networks, may play a role.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) thalamic hyper-connectivity in stroke patients with sleep apnea (SA) compared to those without SA and healthy controls (HC).

Main Methods:

• Stabilized stroke patients underwent 3T resting-state fMRI and polysomnography.
• The ventral-posterior-lateral thalamic nucleus was utilized as a seed region for connectivity analysis.

Main Results:

• Stroke patients with SA showed hyper-connectivity with brain regions involved in threat encoding (e.g., frontal eye field, somatosensory cortices) compared to HC.
• Increased connectivity was observed in SA patients with regions modulating stimulus response (e.g., prefrontal, temporal, occipital cortices).
• Hyper-connectivity extended to brain areas regulating breathing during sleep (pons, midbrain, cerebellum) and chemical responses (hippocampal cortices).

Conclusions:

• Preliminary findings suggest functional hyper-connectivity within thalamic circuits in post-stroke SA patients.
• This hyper-connectivity may influence sensory processing, arousal, and breathing modulation during sleep.
• These alterations could contribute to the adverse clinical outcomes observed in post-stroke sleep apnea.