Descent into sleep is accompanied by disengagement of the conscious brain from the external world. It follows that this process should be associated with reduced neural activity in regions of the brain known to mediate interaction with the environment. We examined blood oxygen dependent (BOLD) signal functional connectivity using conventional seed-based analyses in 3 primary sensory and 3 association networks as normal young adults transitioned from wakefulness to light sleep while lying immobile in the bore of a magnetic resonance imaging scanner. Functional connectivity was maintained in each network throughout all examined states of arousal. Indeed, correlations within the dorsal attention network modestly but significantly increased during light sleep compared to wakefulness. Moreover, our data suggest that neuronally mediated BOLD signal variance generally increases in light sleep. These results do not support the view that ongoing BOLD fluctuations primarily reflect unconstrained cognition. Rather, accumulating evidence supports the hypothesis that spontaneous BOLD fluctuations reflect processes that maintain the integrity of functional systems in the brain.default network ͉ fMRI ͉ neuroimaging ͉ non-rapid eye movement sleep T here is a physiologically distinct change in the state of the brain during sleep in comparison to wakefulness that is manifest subjectively as altered awareness and objectively as reduced responsiveness to environmental stimuli. The electrophysiological correlates of sleep are sufficiently pronounced and characteristic as to be defining (1, 2). Thus, natural sleep is characterized by a sequence of electroencephalographically defined stages that may be broadly divided into nonrapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) that cyclically alternate throughout the sleep period.Over the past decade, PET studies have shown that throughout NREM sleep cerebral blood flow and metabolism are reduced in cortical association areas (3-7), as well as in the brainstem, thalamus, basal ganglia, and basal forebrain (3, 4, 7). NREM sleep is accompanied by reduced responsiveness to stimuli in regions involved in executive function, attention, and perceptual processing (5,7,8). The deepest NREM sleep states are characterized by low frequency oscillations in the EEG during which cognition is thought to be greatly reduced (9-13). During REM, cerebral blood flow and metabolism remain decreased in prefrontal and parietal regions but are increased in paralimbic areas, anterior cingulate, and thalamus (3,7,14), a pattern consistent with the emotionality and reduced logicality notable in during dreaming (7,15,16). REM sleep is also marked by atonia in skeletal muscles, reducing the ability to overtly respond to external stimulation. Thus, the transitions from wakefulness to successively deeper stages of NREM and then REM sleep progressively disengage the self from the environment.It is now well-established that slow (Ͻ0.1 Hz) spontaneous fluctuations of the blood oxygen dependent (BOLD) signal show ph...

Objective Chronic migraineurs (CM) have painful intolerances to somatosensory, visual, olfactory and auditory stimuli during and between migraine attacks. These intolerances are suggestive of atypical affective responses to potentially noxious stimuli. We hypothesized that atypical resting state functional connectivity (rs-fc) of affective pain processing brain regions may associate with these intolerances. This study compared rs-fc of affective pain processing regions in CM to controls. Methods Twelve minutes of resting blood oxygenation level dependent data were collected from 20 interictal adult CM and 20 controls. Rs-fc between 5 affective regions (anterior cingulate cortex, right/left anterior insula, and right/left amygdala) with the rest of the brain was determined. Functional connections consistently differing between CM and controls were identified using summary analyses. Correlations between number of migraine years and the strengths of functional connections that consistently differed between CM and controls were calculated. Results Functional connections with affective pain regions that differed in CM and controls included regions in anterior insula, amygdala, pulvinar, mediodorsal thalamus, middle temporal cortex, and periaqueductal gray. There were significant correlations between number of years with CM and functional connectivity strength between the anterior insula with mediodorsal thalamus and anterior insula with periaqueductal gray. Conclusions CM is associated with interictal atypical rs-fc of affective pain regions with pain-facilitating and pain-inhibiting regions that participate in sensory-discriminative, cognitive, and integrative domains of the pain experience. Atypical rs-fc with affective pain regions may relate to aberrant affective pain processing and atypical affective responses to painful stimuli characteristic of CM.

Objective Most migraineurs develop cutaneous allodynia during migraines and many have cutaneous sensitization between attacks. Atypical pain modulation via the descending pain system may contribute to this sensitization and allodynia. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that compared to non-allodynic migraineurs, allodynic migraineurs have atypical periaqueductal gray (PAG) and nucleus cuneiformis (NCF) resting state functional connectivity (rs-fc) with other pain processing regions. Design Ten minutes resting-state BOLD data were collected from 38 adult migraineurs and 20 controls. Seed-based analyses compared whole-brain rs-fc with PAG and with NCF in migraineurs with severe ictal allodynia (n=8) to migraineurs with no ictal allodynia (n=8). Correlations between the strength of functional connections that differed between severely allodynic and non-allodynic migraineurs with allodynia severity were determined for all migraineurs (n=38). PAG and NCF rs-fc in all migraineurs was compared to rs-fc in controls. Results Migraineurs with severe allodynia had stronger PAG and NCF rs-fc to other brainstem, thalamic, insula and cerebellar regions that participate in discriminative pain processing, as well as to frontal and temporal regions implicated in higher-order pain modulation. Evidence that these rs-fc differences were specific for allodynia included: 1) strong correlations between some rs-fc strengths and allodynia severity among all migraineurs; 2) absence of overlap when comparing rs-fc differences in severely allodynic vs. non-allodynic migraineurs with those in all migraineurs vs. controls. Conclusion Atypical rs-fc of brainstem descending modulatory pain regions with other brainstem and higher-order pain modulating regions is associated with migraine-related allodynia.

In the original version of the Data Descriptor the surname of author Hesham Elhalawani was misspelled. This has now been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions.

The transition from quiet wakeful rest to sleep represents a period over which attention to the external environment fades. Neuroimaging methodologies have provided much information on the shift in neural activity patterns in sleep, but the dynamic restructuring of human brain networks in the transitional period from wake to sleep remains poorly understood. Analysis of electrophysiological measures and functional network connectivity of these early transitional states shows subtle shifts in network architecture that are consistent with reduced external attentiveness and increased internal and self-referential processing. Further, descent to sleep is accompanied by the loss of connectivity in anterior and posterior portions of the default-mode network and more locally organized global network architecture. These data clarify the complex and dynamic nature of the transitional period between wake and sleep and suggest the need for more studies investigating the dynamics of these processes.