Nature and Science of Sleep (Sep 2022)

Abnormal Spontaneous Brain Activity and Cognitive Impairment in Obstructive Sleep Apnea

  • Xie W,
  • Shu Y,
  • Liu X,
  • Li K,
  • Li P,
  • Kong L,
  • Yu P,
  • Huang L,
  • Long T,
  • Zeng L,
  • Li H,
  • Peng D

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 14
pp. 1575 – 1587

Abstract

Read online

Wei Xie,1 Yongqiang Shu,1 Xiang Liu,1 Kunyao Li,1 Panmei Li,1 Linghong Kong,1 Pengfei Yu,2 Ling Huang,1 Ting Long,1 Li Zeng,1 Haijun Li,1,3 Dechang Peng1,3 1Medical Imaging Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, People’s Republic of China; 2Big Data Research Center, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, People’s Republic of China; 3PET Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Dechang Peng; Haijun Li, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, No. 17, Yongwai Zheng Street, Donghu District, Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, 330006, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86 79186427560 ; +86 18970025300, Email [email protected]; [email protected]: This study aimed to explore the alterations in spontaneous brain activity in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) using percent amplitude of fluctuation (PerAF) and investigate the relationship between abnormal spontaneous brain activity and cognitive impairment in OSA.Patients and Methods: Overall, 52 patients with moderate to severe OSA and 61 healthy controls (HCs) were eventually enrolled in this study. All participants underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance (rs-fMRI) and T1-weighted imaging. The PerAF was calculated and compared between patients with OSA and HCs, with voxel level P < 0.001 and cluster level P < 0.05 corrected with Gaussian Random Field was be considered statistically different. A partial correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between altered PerAF and clinical assessments in patients with OSA.Results: Compared to HCs, patients with OSA had significantly lower PerAF values in the right rectal gyrus and left superior frontal gyrus, but higher PerAF values in the right cerebellum posterior lobe and left middle frontal gyrus. The PerAF values of some specific regions in patients with OSA correlated with sleep efficiency and Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores. Additionally, support vector machine analysis showed that PerAF values in all differential brain regions could differentiate patients with OSA from HCs with good accuracy.Conclusion: Specific brain areas in OSA patients may exhibit aberrant neuronal activity, and these anomalies may be linked to decreased cognitive performance. This discovery offers fresh perspectives on these patients’ neurocognition.Keywords: cerebellum, cognitive function, frontal lobe, functional magnetic resonance imaging, percent amplitude of fluctuation

Keywords