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Disrupted frontostriatal connectivity in primary insomnia: a DTI study

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Abstract

Dysfunction of the sleep-wake transition is considered to be associated with the pathology of patients with primary insomnia (PI). Previous animal study had reported that brain circuits between the striatum and cortex can regulate sleep-wake transitions. So far, few studies have systematically explored the structural connectivity of the striatum-centered circuits and their potential roles in patients with PI. In this study, we chosen the striatum as the seed and 10 priori target regions as masks to assess the structural connectivity by using seed-based classification with a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) probabilistic tractography method. Track strengths of the striatum-centered circuits were compared between 22 patients with PI (41.27 ± 9.21 years) and 30 healthy controls (HC) (35.2 ± 8.14 years). Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to measure the sleep quality in all participants. Lower track strengths (left striatum- anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), left striatum- dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), left striatum-Hippocampus, and right striatum-Hippocampus) were observed in patients with PI compared to HC. Additionally, the lower track strengths of brain circuits mentioned above were negatively correlated with PSQI. Taken together, our findings revealed the lower tract strength of frontostriatal circuits in patients with PI and HC, which provided the implications of the system-level structural connections of frontostriatal circuits in the pathology of PI. We suggested that the track strengths of the frontostriatal circuits calculated from DTI can be the potential neuroimaging biomarkers of the sleep quality in patients with PI.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 81871426, 81871430, the program for Young Talents of Science and Technology in Universities of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region NJYT-17-B11, the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia under Grant No. 2019JQ07, the science and technology planning project of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region 2019GG109, and Chunhui Program of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China 2018-45.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, China

    Longmao Chen, Ziqiang Shao, Yan Xu, Shicong Wang, Min Zhang, Shuang Liu, Xinwen Wen & Kai Yuan

  2. Engineering Research Center of Molecular and Neuroimaging, Ministry of Education, Xi’an, 710071, China

    Longmao Chen, Ziqiang Shao, Yan Xu, Shicong Wang, Min Zhang, Shuang Liu, Xinwen Wen & Kai Yuan

  3. Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Baotou Medical College, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, 014010, People’s Republic of China

    Bo Liu

  4. Xi’an Aerosemi Technology Co., LTD, Xi’an, China

    Xue Xia

  5. Information Processing Laboratory, School of Information Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, 014010, China

    Kai Yuan & Dahua Yu

  6. School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University, 266 Xinglong Section of Xifeng Road, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710126, People’s Republic of China

    Kai Yuan

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  1. Longmao Chen
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  8. Bo Liu
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Correspondence to Kai Yuan or Dahua Yu.

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Chen, L., Shao, Z., Xu, Y. et al. Disrupted frontostriatal connectivity in primary insomnia: a DTI study. Brain Imaging and Behavior 15, 2524–2531 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-021-00454-3

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