Regional structural-functional coupling alterations associated with subjective sleep quality in young adults

Area of Science:

• Neuroimaging
• Sleep Science
• Connectomics

Background:

• Poor sleep quality is linked to negative behavioral and brain outcomes.
• Neurobiological mechanisms underlying these effects are not fully understood.
• Structural-functional connectivity (SC-FC) coupling may offer insights into brain network organization during sleep.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between sleep quality and brain structure-function coupling.
• To identify specific brain regions where SC-FC coupling differs between good and poor sleepers.
• To explore the association between SC-FC coupling patterns and sleep quality metrics.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of multimodal MRI data from 1037 adults (Human Connectome Project).
• Assessment of sleep quality using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI).
• Quantification of regional SC-FC coupling and comparison between poor (PSQI>5) and good (PSQI≤5) sleepers using linear support vector regression (SVR).

Main Results:

• Poor sleepers showed reduced SC-FC coupling in frontoparietal and default-mode regions compared to good sleepers.
• Increased SC-FC coupling was observed in temporal subregions of poor sleepers.
• A statistically significant but weak association was found between coupling features and PSQI scores.

Conclusions:

• Regional alterations in structure-function alignment are associated with subjective sleep quality.
• SC-FC coupling serves as a potential marker for sleep-related brain differences.
• Further research in clinical and longitudinal studies is warranted for validation.