The Role of Local Sleep Disturbance in Obesity Risk: A Sleep Neuroimaging Study - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT With obesity prevalence at never-before-seen incidences, there is an imperative need to identify modifiable behavioral and physiologic targets to reduce obesogenic risk factors. Poor sleep is a modifiable therapeutic target that recent neuroimaging research indicates plays a vital role in obesity. However, the mechanisms that drive the relationship between poor sleep and obesity are elusive and unclear. New and advanced neuroimaging and sleep methods hold promise in helping to determine when and how poor sleep imparts risk for physical health disorders generally and obesity specifically. Sleep neuroimaging uses advanced functional neuroimaging techniques concurrent with polysomnographic methods to obtain a clearer and more detailed picture of brain activation patterns that occurs during sleep; such novel information can help elucidate previously undiscovered mechanisms linking sleep with obesity so that the underlying mechanisms can be more directly targeted in prevention and treatment efforts. There is increasing realization that sleep, and its restorative functions, are regionalized processes localized in the brain and can become disrupted regionally. In our model, we propose that regionalized sleep disturbance prevents restorative benefit to those regions, thereby resulting in daytime impairments specific to those brain regions affected during sleep, a process called local sleep disturbance. This comprehensive sleep neuroimaging study includes gold-standard measures at various levels of analysis (e.g., dim-light melatonin onset assessment, polysomnography, actigraphy, and self-reported sleep questionnaires and diaries) in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging during non-rapid eye movement sleep to understand (Aim 1) how functional connectivity during sleep relates to obesity-related outcomes (i.e., dietary behaviors, sedentary behavior, neural activation in brain regions associated with food-related reward and inhibition), (Aim 2) how differences in network-level functional connectivity during sleep, as a marker of local sleep disturbance, may mediate the association between poor sleep and obesity-related outcomes, and (Aim 3) explore how the relationship between functional connectivity during sleep and obesogenic risk factors differ across individual factors including developmental status (adolescents and young adults) and sex. This research will use innovative methodologies to uncover critical mechanisms that link poor sleep with obesity, which has the potential to inform preclinical models sleep health and general wellbeing. Furthermore, this research will provide support for meritorious research at an undergraduate-focused institution (Brigham Young University) by providing undergraduate students with advanced, active biomedical research experience, all of which will ultimately strengthen the research environment present at Brigham Young University and feed the sleep medicine pipeline with well trained and experienced individuals.
