Abstract

Sleep architecture carries vital information about brain health across the lifespan. In particular, the ability to express distinct vigilance states is a key physiological marker of neurological wellbeing in the newborn infant although systems-level mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we demonstrate that the transition from quiet to active sleep in newborn infants is marked by a substantial reorganization of large-scale cortical activity and functional brain networks. This reorganization is attenuated in preterm infants and predicts visual performance at two years. We find a striking match between these empirical effects and a computational model of large-scale brain states which uncovers fundamental biophysical mechanisms not evident from inspection of the data. Active sleep is defined by reduced energy in a uniform mode of neural activity and increased energy in two more complex anteroposterior modes. Preterm-born infants show a deficit in this sleep-related reorganization of modal energy that carries novel prognostic information.

Authors	Tokariev, Anton; Roberts, James A; Zalesky, Andrew; Zhao, Xuelong; Vanhatalo, Sampsa; Breakspear, Michael; Cocchi, Luca
Journal	Nature Communications
Pages	2619
Volume	10
Date	1/06/2019
Grant ID	00161034
Funding Body	Finnish Cultural Foundation (Suomen Kulttuurirahasto)
URL	http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=10.1038/s41467-019-10467-8
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