Sleep neuroimaging: Review and future directions.
Mariana Pereira1, Xinyuan Chen1,2, Anastasiya Paltarzhytskaya1
1Donders Institute of Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Journal of Sleep Research
|February 13, 2025
Summary
Neuroimaging combined with electroencephalography offers detailed insights into the sleeping brain. However, technical challenges in sleep neuroimaging impact study generalizability and require innovative solutions.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Sleep Medicine
Background:
- Sleep research has advanced from electroencephalography (EEG) in the 1930s to neuroimaging techniques since the 1990s.
- Neuroimaging provides higher spatial resolution for studying brain organization and functional connectivity during sleep.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review the evolution and current state of sleep neuroimaging in healthy adults.
- To discuss the challenges and future directions of combining EEG with neuroimaging modalities for sleep studies.
Main Methods:
- Review of historical and recent findings in sleep neuroimaging.
- Discussion of technical challenges in concurrent EEG and neuroimaging (e.g., PET, structural MRI, fMRI) for sleep research.
Main Results:
- Sleep neuroimaging has significantly enhanced understanding of the sleeping brain's organization and connectivity.
- Concurrent EEG and imaging present challenges including sleep disruption, physiological artifacts, and data interpretation.
Conclusions:
- Despite challenges, sleep neuroimaging is crucial for understanding brain function during sleep.
- Addressing technical hurdles is vital for improving sample sizes and the generalizability of sleep neuroimaging findings.
