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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Sleep and Circadian Rhythms
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1568557
This article is part of the Research Topic Networks during sleep in physiological and pathological conditions View all articles
Altered Connection Properties of the Left Dorsolateral Superior Frontal Gyrus in De novo Drug-naïve Insomnia Disorder
Provisionally accepted
Hui Wang 1
Xianjun Ma 1* Xingru Xu 2 Qian Ning 1 Benyu Qiao 1 Bofeng Yang 1 Na Sun 1 Dong Xu 1 Xin Tang 1- 1 Department of Neurology, Lianyungang Affiliated Hospital, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Lianyungang, China
- 2 Department of Radiology, Lianyungang Affiliated Hospital, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Lianyungang, China
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.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.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.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.
Keywords: insomnia disorder, brain function, Degree centrality, left dorsolateral 1 superior frontal gyrus 2, Drug-naïve
Received: 30 Jan 2025; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Ma, Xu, Ning, Qiao, Yang, Sun, Xu and Tang. 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:
Xianjun Ma, Department of Neurology, Lianyungang Affiliated Hospital, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Lianyungang, China
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