ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Aging Neurosci.
Sec. Neurocognitive Aging and Behavior
Volume 17 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2025.1640653
This article is part of the Research TopicCircadian Rhythms and AgingView all 3 articles
Distinct effect of partial sleep deprivation associated with gray matter changes in young and old adults
Provisionally accepted
- Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
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Background: Sleep deprivation (SD) exerts adverse effects on human brain. However, whether there were distinct effects of partial SD associated with gray matter changes in young and old adults respectively remains unclear. Methods: 42 young adults and 38 old adults were enrolled in this study. All participants underwent MRI scanning, and FreeSurfer 5.3 was used to calculate cortical thickness (CT) and cortical surface area (CSA). Paired two samples t-tests was conducted to explore CT and CSA changes. Partial SD involved restricting total sleep time to approximately three hours, compared with baseline sleep conditions. Results: Young adults exhibited increased biopsychological response (Sickness-Q score) following partial SD compared to the rested condition, and similar trend was observed in old adults in SD. Young adults exhibited decreased CSA of left caudal middle frontal cortex and CT of entorhinal cortex (EC), but increased CSA of left temporal pole and CT of right insula after SD. However, old adults showed increased CSA and CT in widespread brain regions, including left superior frontal cortex, left isthmus cingulate cortex and right EC. While young adults showed a significant positive correlation between percent change of CSA of left EC and the biopsychological response, old adults showed a significant negative correlation between percentage change in CT of the left isthmus cingulate cortex and biopsychological response.Distinct effect of partial SD associated with gray matter changes were observed in young and old adults respectively. These findings shed light on SD might affect brain structures differently in young adults and old adults.
Keywords: Sleep Deprivation, young adults, old adults, cortical thickness, Cortical surface area
Received: 04 Jun 2025; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fu, Shi, Xu and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hui Xu, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
DongWu Xu, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
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