Brain function in children with obstructive sleep apnea: a resting-state fMRI study
Tingting Ji1, Xiaodan Li1, Jun Chen2
1Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Children's Hospital, Capital Medical University, National Center for Children's Health, Beijing, China.
Insights
Children with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) show altered brain activity in specific regions, potentially explaining their cognitive impairments. This study highlights neural differences linked to cognitive dysfunction in pediatric OSA.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Pediatric Medicine
- Radiology
Background:
- Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is common in children and linked to cognitive deficits.
- The underlying neural mechanisms of cognitive dysfunction in pediatric OSA remain unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate neural differences between children with OSA and healthy controls using resting-state fMRI.
- To explore the relationship between these neural differences and cognitive function in children with OSA.
Main Methods:
- Recruited 20 children with OSA and 29 healthy controls, matched for age, gender, and handedness.
- Utilized resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) to assess amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and regional homogeneity (ReHo).
- Performed Pearson correlation analysis between rs-fMRI metrics and cognitive scores in children with OSA.
Main Results:
- Children with OSA exhibited decreased ALFF in the left angular gyrus and increased ALFF in the right insula compared to controls.
- Reduced ReHo was observed in the left medial superior frontal gyrus, right lingual gyrus, and left precuneus in children with OSA.
- ReHo in the right lingual gyrus correlated negatively with full-scale IQ (FIQ) and verbal IQ (VIQ), while ReHo in the left medial superior frontal gyrus correlated positively with VIQ in the OSA group.
Conclusions:
- Children with OSA demonstrate abnormal neural activity in key brain regions.
- These neural abnormalities are potentially associated with impaired cognitive functions.
- Altered brain activity may serve as a neural mechanism underlying cognitive dysfunction in pediatric OSA.
Objective:
To explore the neural difference between children with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and healthy controls, together with the relation between this difference and cognitive dysfunction of children with OSA.
Methods:
Twenty children with OSA (7.2 ± 3.1 years, apnea hypopnea index (AHI): 16.5 ± 16.6 events/h) and 29 healthy controls (7.7 ± 2.8 years, AHI: 1.7 ± 1.2 events/h) were recruited and matched with age, gender, and handedness. All children underwent resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) and T1-wighted imaging. Some children were sedated for MRI scanning. We compared amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and regional homogeneity (ReHo) of children with OSA with those of healthy controls. During resting-state, the former reflects the intensity of the spontaneous neural activities, whereas the latter reflects temporal similarity of the spontaneous neural activities within a local brain region. Pearson correlation analysis was performed between these features of rs-fMRI and cognitive scores among children with OSA.
Results:
Compared with controls, children with OSA showed decreased ALFF in the left angular gyrus but increased ALFF in the right insula, and decreased ReHo in the left medial superior frontal gyrus, right lingual gyrus, and left precuneus. Additionally, among children with OSA, the ReHo value in the right lingual gyrus was negatively correlated with FIQ and VIQ, whereas that in the left medial superior frontal gyrus was positively correlated with VIQ.
Conclusions:
Children with OSA presented abnormal neural activities in some brain regions and impaired cognitive functions with the former possibly being the neural mechanism of the latter.
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