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Aperiodic neural activity distinguishes between phasic and tonic REM sleep
Yevgenia Rosenblum1, Tamás Bogdány2,3, Lili Benedikta Nádasy2
1Radboud University Medical Centre, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Journal of Sleep Research
|December 26, 2024
Summary
Aperiodic neural activity differentiates phasic and tonic states within rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Slopes of aperiodic power reliably reflect REM event intensity but cannot predict REM events using scalp electroencephalography.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Sleep Science
- Computational Neuroscience
Background:
- Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is traditionally viewed as a uniform phase.
- However, REM sleep exhibits heterogeneity, with distinct phasic and tonic constituents.
- These constituents differ in various characteristics, including neural activity patterns.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate differences between tonic and phasic REM sleep states concerning aperiodic neural activity.
- To assess aperiodic neural activity as a marker for arousal and sleep.
- To determine if aperiodic activity can differentiate REM sleep states and reflect event intensity.
Main Methods:
- Aperiodic neural activity was analyzed using Irregularly Resampled Auto-Spectral Analysis on electroencephalography (EEG) data.
- Slopes of the aperiodic power component were measured in low (2-30 Hz) and high (30-48 Hz) frequency bands.
- Rapid eye movement (REM) amplitudes were quantified using YASA on electrooculography (EOG) data, employing both binary and continuous approaches.
Main Results:
- The binary approach showed steeper low-band slopes in the phasic REM state with small effect sizes.
- High-band aperiodic slopes were flatter in the phasic versus tonic state, exhibiting medium-to-large effect sizes.
- Continuous analysis confirmed these findings, and temporal analysis indicated no cross-correlation between preceding aperiodic activity and REM event amplitudes.
Conclusions:
- Aperiodic EEG slopes serve as a reliable marker to distinguish between phasic and tonic REM sleep.
- Aperiodic slopes reflect the intensity of phasic REM events.
- Scalp EEG-based aperiodic activity could not predict REM events or be predicted by them.
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