Background and purpose: Insomnia is a common sleep disorder with negative consequences such as decreased quality of life. In this study, the effect of sleep deprivation on memory in both young and older adults was investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Materials and methods: In this retrospective study, fMRI data of 40 healthy subjects (17 young and 23 older people) who had a one-month sleep deprivation period (during the experiment they woke up three hours earlier than usual) were obtained. Then, pre-processing was done to remove artifacts and noise. Finally, data processing was completed in order to extract the brain activity map focusing on brain areas related to memory.
Results: Findings showed that the brain activity of most areas are reduced due to insomnia. In the young group, 17 functional connections were obtained at the beginning of the study which decreased to only one connection after the insomnia period. In older adults there were seven connections at the beginning of the study that decreased to four after the insomnia period (P< 0.05).
Conclusion: Brain map analysis, including connections and activity levels of memory-related areas, showed that sleep deprivation affects the brains of young and old people. Our findings can pave the way for future studies to understand the effect of insomnia on memory and brain.