Cognitive vulnerability to sleep deprivation is robustly associated with two dynamic connectivity states

Abstract

Robustly linking dynamic functional connectivity (DFC) states to behaviour is an important goal of the fledgling research using these methods. Previously, using a sliding window approach, we identified two dynamic connectivity states (DCS) linked to arousal. Here, in an independent dataset, 32 healthy participants underwent two sets of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, once in a well-rested state and once after a single night of total sleep deprivation. Using a temporal differencing method, DFC and clustering analysis on the resting state fMRI data revealed five centroids that were highly correlated with those found in previous work, including the two states associated with high and low arousal. Individual differences in cognitive vulnerability to sleep deprivation were measured using changes in Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) performance (lapses and median reaction speed), Changes in the percentage of time spent in the arousal states from the well-rested to the sleep-deprived condition specifically were correlated with declines in PVT performance. Our results provide good evidence of the validity and reproducibility of DFC measures, particularly with regard to measuring arousal and attention, and are an encouraging base from which to build a chronnectome mapping DCS to cognition.