Work

Altered connection properties of the left dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus in de novo drug-naïve insomnia disorder

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Background: Insomnia disorder (ID) is increasingly prevalent, posing significant risks to patients' physical and mental health. However, its neuropathological mechanisms remain unclear. Despite extensive research on ID using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, a unified framework for describing its brain function alterations remains absent. Moreover, most prior studies have not fully accounted for the potential impact of medication on outcomes regarding enrollment criteria. Methods: We recruited 22 ID and 22 healthy controls (HC), matched for age and gender. Patients with ID were never prescribed medications for sleep disorders before enrollment. We detected differences in voxel-wise degree centrality (DC) between the two groups and analyzed the correlation between altered DC values and insomnia severity. Additionally, we conducted receiver operating characteristic analysis to evaluate the diagnostic effectiveness of the altered DC values for ID. Results: In ID patients, the weighted DC values of the left dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus (SFG) and the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG) were significantly lower than those of HC, with a notable negative correlation between the weighted DC values of the left dorsolateral SFG and PSQI scores. Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the weighted DC of the left dorsolateral SFG effectively differentiates between ID and HC, exhibiting high sensitivity and specificity. Conclusion: This study offers new insights into brain dysfunction and the pathophysiology of ID through voxel-based DC measurements. The results indicate that altered DC properties of the left dorsolateral SFG might serve as a diagnostic marker for ID and a potential therapeutic target for brain function modulation.

Source: Frontiers in Neuroscience

DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1568557