Sleep disturbances are one of the preventive factors to delay the onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease. Early identification of Alzheimer's disease patients prone to develop sleep disturbances to offer early medical intervention is important. Resting-state functional MRI is a widely used method to investigate the neural mechanisms and find neuroimaging biomarkers in neuropsychiatric diseases. In this study, we applied percent amplitude of fluctuation (PerAF) and mPerAF (divided by global mean PerAF) to test the strength of intrinsic brain activity in 38 mild Alzheimer's disease patients with sleep disturbances (ADSD) and 21 mild Alzheimer's disease patients without sleep disturbances (ADNSD). Compared with ADNSD, we found decreased intrinsic brain activity in the calcarine gyrus, the lingual gyrus, the fusiform gyrus extending to the parahippocampal gyrus, the precentral gyrus, the postcentral gyrus (all in the left hemisphere) and the left brainstem. Conclusively, ADSD exhibited reduced neural activity in specific brain regions related to the sensorimotor network and the visual network, which indicated the contribution of sleep disturbances to the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Especially, the ventral visual pathway to the hippocampus might serve for the memory impaired by sleep disturbances in Alzheimer's disease, and the brainstem might be critical in the initiation of sleep disturbances in Alzheimer's disease. These findings further elucidate the interactions between Alzheimer's disease and sleep disturbances and could help with the early recognition of Alzheimer's disease patients who tend to develop sleep disturbances.

中文翻译：

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患有睡眠障碍的轻度阿尔茨海默病患者的内在大脑活动发生了改变。

睡眠障碍是延缓阿尔茨海默病发病和进展的预防因素之一。早期识别容易出现睡眠障碍的阿尔茨海默病患者以提供早期医疗干预非常重要。静息态功能磁共振成像是一种广泛用于研究神经精神疾病的神经机制和寻找神经影像生物标志物的方法。在这项研究中，我们应用波动幅度百分比 (PerAF) 和 mPerAF（除以全球平均 PerAF）来测试 38 名患有睡眠障碍 (ADSD) 的轻度阿尔茨海默病患者和 21 名没有睡眠的轻度阿尔茨海默病患者的内在大脑活动强度干扰（ADNSD）。与 ADNSD 相比，我们发现距状回、舌回、延伸至海马旁回的梭状回、中央前回、中央后回（均位于左半球）和左脑干的内在大脑活动减少。总之，ADSD 表现出与感觉运动网络和视觉网络相关的特定大脑区域的神经活动减少，这表明睡眠障碍对阿尔茨海默病的进展有贡献。特别是，通向海马体的腹侧视觉通路可能对阿尔茨海默氏病中因睡眠障碍而受损的记忆起作用，而脑干可能在阿尔茨海默病中睡眠障碍的发生中起关键作用。这些发现进一步阐明了阿尔茨海默病和睡眠障碍之间的相互作用，并可能有助于早期识别容易出现睡眠障碍的阿尔茨海默病患者。