Seminars and events

at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research and at cooperating institutes

Speaker: Prof. Michael Breakspear Host: Dr. Marc Tittgemeyer

Talk by Prof. Michael Breakspear, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Australia

Large-scale brain modes reorganize between infant sleep states and predict developmental outcome in preterms
Sleep architecture carries important information about brain health. Here we show that active compared to quiet sleep in infants heralds a marked change from long- to short-range functional connectivity across broad-frequency neural activity. This change in cortical connectivity is attenuated following preterm birth and pre-empts visual performance at two years. Biophysical modeling shows that active sleep is defined by reduced energy in a large-scale, uniform mode of spatiotemporal neural activity and increased energy in two non-uniform anteroposterior modes. This distinct energy redistribution leads to the emergence of more complex connectivity patterns in active sleep compared to quiet sleep. Preterm-born infants show an attenuation in this sleep-related reorganization of connectivity that carries novel prognostic information. [more]
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