Last week's workouts and sleepless nights can affect your brain until next week

Researchers monitored one individual's brain and behavioral activity for five months using brain scans, wearable devices, and smartphone data.

In a recent study published in PLoS Biologyresearchers conducted neuroimaging to assess the influence of physiological, environmental, and behavioral factors on the functional connectivity of the human brain.

background

External variables such as sleep quality, exercise, and social interactions influence mental state over different timelines. Major psychiatric disorders exhibit considerable variation in brain function across timelines, and functional brain connectivity patterns accurately reflect mood swings. However, research on brain activity with respect to cognitive and psychological properties and sampling time is limited.

Few studies have investigated changes in brain functional connectivity in response to environmental, physiological, and behavioral changes over different timelines. Longitudinal studies with frequent measurement points are needed to investigate brain-behavior interactions and time-dependent effects.

About research

In this study, researchers studied a 33-year-old woman using high-precision functional mapping to assess the brain's response to environmental, physiological, and behavioral changes.

Researchers used mobile phones and wearable devices and 30 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to assess attention, memory, resting state, and the effects of natural stimuli on behavior over 133 days. Data was collected. The research dataset includes brain activity data from several fMRI activities and objective data from environmental elements acquired using autonomous sensors.

The researchers investigated functional performance during four separate tasks: sustained attention, resting state, psychomotor arousal test (PVT) for movie viewing as a realistic paradigm, and dual 1-back and 2-back tests for working memory. We evaluated brain connectivity. They also monitored external variables such as sleep, physical activity, autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity, and mood using state-of-the-art mobile phones and wearable gadgets.

The researchers assessed cognitive function daily for 19 weeks and conducted fMRI twice a week for 15 weeks. Quora Ring tracked physical activity and sleep. A smartphone app tracked my mood and daily events. In addition, participants completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) questionnaire. Lagged studies examined the intercorrelation of behavioral, physiological, and lifestyle variables and timelines that influence brain functional connectivity.

Researchers investigated the effects of behavioral, physiological, and lifestyle variables on functional brain connectivity patterns. They investigated the correlation between sleep and attentional tasks in the frontoparietal (FPN), default mode (DMN), cingulate operculum, and somatomotor networks. They also investigated the relationship between functional connections related to sleep, body movement patterns, and working memory.

The researchers investigated whether increased similarities in mood, sleep patterns, and ANS activity between days led to increased similarities between days during movie-watching activities. Additionally, we investigated whether sleep habits over the past 15 days were associated with functional connectivity during sustained attention tasks and how sleep affects these connections across different time windows. Additionally, we investigated whether daily behavioral, physiological, and lifestyle variables could explain the variation in classification accuracy for time segments.

result

This study revealed that physical movement and sleep patterns are associated with functional brain connectivity during tasks, including attention, working memory, and resting-state functional MRI. Sleep patterns over the past 15 days also correlate with connectivity of FPN, DMN, somatomotor, and cingulo-opercular brain networks during attention tasks. Mood, sleep, and ANS activity also influence the accuracy of temporal segment classification during a movie viewing task.

Sleep and exercise affect how your brain connects when performing cognitively demanding activities. Still, heart rate variability (HRV) and breathing rate are more important for connectivity at rest or while watching a movie. Longer sleep duration and increased interruptions improve overall DMN efficiency and somatomotor integration. Reduced physical activity the previous day is also associated with weaker connectivity and reduced FPN integration.

Maximum HRV values ​​on the previous day were associated with connections between the middle temporal gyrus and insula on the left side and between the posterior cingulate gyrus and cerebellum on the right side. The lower day-ahead minimum HRV is associated with weaker integration between networks in the FPN.

The research team found a negative association between the previous day's sleepless sleep and ISC activity in the left superior parietal sulcus, but a positive association between average HRV and ISC activity in the medial left superior frontal gyrus. I discovered something. The overall efficiency of DMN and FPN showed consistent connectivity with short lags of wakefulness and long lags of sleep, whereas participation coefficients were unaffected.

conclusion

The results of this study show that physiological and behavioral variables are associated with short- and long-term brain connectivity for up to 15 days. During exposure to realistic stimuli, such as movies, brain activity becomes associated with breathing rate patterns in specific brain regions within 8 to 11 days. Combining brain connectivity, physiological information, and environmental signals will advance environmental neuroscience research and facilitate precision medicine.