Cortical Grey Matter Changes, Behavior and Cognition in Children with Sleep Disordered Breathing

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigated cortical thickness and volumetric changes in children to better understand the impact of obstructive sleep disordered breathing (SDB) on the neurodevelopment of specific regions of the brain. We also aimed to investigate how these changes were related to the behavioral, cognitive and autonomic deficits observed in the condition. Neuroimaging, behavioral and sleep data were obtained from 30 children (15 non snoring controls, 15 referred for assessment of SDB) aged 7 to 17 years. Gyral-based regions of interest were identified using the Desikan-Killiany Atlas. Student’s T-tests were used to compare regions of interest between the controls and SDB groups. We found cortical thickness was significantly greater in the right caudal anterior cingulate and right cuneus regions and volumetric increases in the left caudal middle frontal, bilateral rostral anterior cingulate, left, right and bilateral caudate brain regions in children with SDB compared to controls. Neither cortical thickness nor volumetric changes were associated with behavioral or cognitive measures. The findings of this study indicate disruptions to neural developmental processes occurring in structural regions of the brain; however, these changes appear unrelated to behavioral or cognitive outcomes.