Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2022 Nov 5;176:108374. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108374. Epub 2022 Sep 24.
Adolescence is characterized by biological changes in hormonal and circadian systems that, with concurrent psychosocial changes, result in increased sleep disturbances and stress sensitivity. Sleep disturbance has been associated with heightened stress sensitivity and elevated levels of inflammation in adults and adolescents, yet the neural correlates are unknown in adolescents. The current study investigated whether and how individual differences in peripheral immune markers (IL-6, TNF-α) related to neural response to stress in adolescents and whether these immune-brain associations were moderated by adolescents' sleep duration. Thirty-seven adolescents (14-15 years) who met quality control criteria for fMRI reported daily sleep duration for 7 days and performed a fMRI stressor task. A subsample of 23 adolescents additionally provided blood samples that were assayed for inflammatory markers using a multiplex assay. Results revealed that average sleep duration moderated associations between TNF-α and medial frontolimbic circuitry (amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex) during the stressor task such that, among adolescents who reported shorter sleep duration, higher levels of TNF-α were associated with greater deactivation in those regions during stress, which was associated with greater self-reported anxiety. These findings suggest that insufficient sleep duration coupled with greater levels of peripheral inflammation may promote a neural profile characterized by alterations in frontolimbic circuitry during stress, which can exacerbate sleep disturbances and/or peripheral inflammation.
青春期的特点是激素和昼夜节律系统的生物学变化，伴随着同时发生的心理社会变化，导致睡眠障碍和应激敏感性增加。睡眠障碍与成年人和青少年的应激敏感性增加和炎症水平升高有关，但在青少年中，其神经相关性尚不清楚。本研究调查了个体外周免疫标志物（IL-6、TNF-α）的差异是否与青少年对压力的神经反应有关，以及这些免疫-大脑的关联是否受到青少年睡眠时间的调节。37 名符合 fMRI 质量控制标准的青少年（14-15 岁）报告了 7 天的日常睡眠时间，并进行了 fMRI 应激任务。一个由 23 名青少年组成的亚样本还提供了血液样本，使用多重分析测定法测定炎症标志物。结果表明，平均睡眠时间调节了 TNF-α与中前额皮质边缘回路（杏仁核、内侧前额叶皮质）在应激任务中的关联，在睡眠时间较短的青少年中，较高水平的 TNF-α与应激期间这些区域的去激活程度更大相关，这与更高的自我报告焦虑相关。这些发现表明，睡眠不足加上外周炎症水平升高可能会导致应激期间边缘前回路发生变化的神经特征，从而加剧睡眠障碍和/或外周炎症。
