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Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is generally regarded as a prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In coping with the challenges caused by AD, we analyzed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 82 MCI subjects and 93 normal controls (NCs). The alteration of brain functional network in MCI was investigated on three scales, including global metrics, nodal characteristics, and modular properties. The results supported the existence of small worldness, hubs, and community structure in the brain functional networks of both groups. Compared with NCs, the network altered in MCI over all the three scales. In scale I, we found significantly decreased characteristic path length and increased global efficiency in MCI. Moreover, altered global network metrics were associated with cognitive level evaluated by neuropsychological assessments. In scale II, the nodal betweenness centrality of some global hubs, such as the right Crus II of cerebellar hemisphere (CERCRU2.R) and fusiform gyrus (FFG.R), changed significantly and associated with the severity and cognitive impairment in MCI. In scale III, although anatomically adjacent regions tended to be clustered into the same module regardless of group, discrepancies existed in the composition of modules in both groups, with a prominent separation of the cerebellum and a less localized organization of community structure in MCI compared with NC. Taking advantages of random forest approach, we achieved an accuracy of 91.4% to discriminate MCI patients from NCs by integrating cognitive assessments and network analysis. The importance of the used features fed into the classifier further validated the nodal characteristics of CERCRU2.R and FFG.R could be potential biomarkers in the identification of MCI. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that the brain functional connectome data altered at the stage of MCI and could assist the automatic diagnosis of MCI patients.

Sleep electroencephalography (EEG) provides an opportunity to study sleep scientifically, whose chaotic, dynamic, complex, and dissipative nature implies that non-linear approaches could uncover some mechanism of sleep. Based on well-established complexity theories, one hypothesis in sleep medicine is that lower complexity of brain waves at pre-sleep state can facilitate sleep initiation and further improve sleep quality. However, this has never been studied with solid data. In this study, EEG collected from healthy subjects was used to investigate the association between pre-sleep EEG complexity and sleep quality. Multiscale entropy analysis (MSE) was applied to pre-sleep EEG signals recorded immediately after light-off (while subjects were awake) for measuring the complexities of brain dynamics by a proposed index, CI1−30. Slow wave activity (SWA) in sleep, which is commonly used as an indicator of sleep depth or sleep intensity, was quantified based on two methods, traditional Fast Fourier transform (FFT) and ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD). The associations between wake EEG complexity, sleep latency, and SWA in sleep were evaluated. Our results demonstrated that lower complexity before sleep onset is associated with decreased sleep latency, indicating a potential facilitating role of reduced pre-sleep complexity in the wake-sleep transition. In addition, the proposed EEMD-based method revealed an association between wake complexity and quantified SWA in the beginning of sleep (90 min after sleep onset). Complexity metric could thus be considered as a potential indicator for sleep interventions, and further studies are encouraged to examine the application of EEG complexity before sleep onset in populations with difficulty in sleep initiation. Further studies may also examine the mechanisms of the causal relationships between pre-sleep brain complexity and SWA, or conduct comparisons between normal and pathological conditions.