Effects of Sleep Deprivation on the Brain Electrical Activity in Mice

Abstract

Sleep plays a crucial role in maintaining brain health. Insufficient sleep leads to an enhanced permeability of the blood–brain barrier and the development of diseases of small cerebral vessels. In this study, we discuss the possibility of detecting changes in the electrical activity of the brain associated with sleep deficit, using an extended detrended fluctuation analysis (EDFA). We apply this approach to electroencephalograms (EEG) in mice to identify signs of changes that can be caused by short-term sleep deprivation (SD). Although the SD effect is usually subject-dependent, analysis of a group of animals shows the appearance of a pronounced decrease in EDFA scaling exponents, describing power-law correlations and the impact of nonstationarity as a fairly typical response. Using EDFA, we revealed an SD effect in 9 out of 10 mice (Mann–Whitney test, p0.05) that outperforms the DFA results (7 out of 10 mice). This tool may be a promising method for quantifying SD-induced pathological changes in the brain.

Keywords

• detrended fluctuation analysis
• long-range correlations
• electroencephalogram
• sleep deprivation
• nonstationarity