title: Enhanced brain small-worldness after sleep deprivation: a compensatory effect.
abstract: Sleep deprivation has a variable impact on extrinsic activities during multiple cognitive tasks, especially on mood and emotion processing. There is also a trait-like individual vulnerability or compensatory effect in cognition. Previous studies have elucidated the altered functional connectivity after sleep deprivation. However, it remains unclear whether the small-world properties of resting-state network are sensitive to sleep deprivation. A small-world network is a type of graph that combines a high local connectivity as well as a few long-range connections, which ensures a higher information-processing efficiency at a low cost. The complex network of the brain can be described as a small-world network, in which a node is a brain region and an edge is present when there is a functional correlation between two nodes. Here, we investigated the topological properties of the human brain networks of 22 healthy subjects under sufficient sleep and sleep-deprived conditions. Specifically, small-worldness is utilized to quantify the small-world property, by comparing the clustering coefficient and path length of a given network to an equivalent random network with same degree distribution. After sufficient sleep, the brain networks showed the property of small-worldness. Compared with the resting state under sufficient sleep, the small-world property was significantly enhanced in the sleep deprivation condition, suggesting a possible compensatory adaptation of the human brain. Specifically, the altered measurements were correlated with the neuroticism of subjects, indicating that individuals with low-levels of neuroticism are more resilient to sleep deprivation.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education) and School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Huan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Yulin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lei
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000075384:Neuroticism; D012146:Rest / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D012892:Sleep Deprivation / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D012894:Sleep Stages / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: compensatory effect; neuroticism; resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging; sleep deprivation; small-worldness