A Brain Connectome Biomarker for Sleep Health

Sleep health is both conceptually and operationally a composite concept containing multiple domains of sleep. In line with this, high dependence and interaction across different domains of sleep health encourage a transition in sleep health research from categorical to dimensional approaches that integrate neuroscience and sleep health. Here, we seek to identify the covariance patterns between multiple-sleep health domains and distributed intrinsic functional connectivity by applying a multivariate approach (partial least squares). This multivariate analysis revealed a composite sleep health dimension co-varying with connectivity patterns involving the attentional and thalamic networks and which appear relevant at the neuromolecular level. These findings were further replicated and generalized to several unseen independent datasets. Critically, the identified sleep-health related connectome showed diagnostic potential for insomnia disorder. These results together delineate a brain connectome biomarker for sleep health with high potential for clinical translation.