Brain imaging links chronic insomnia to reversible cognitive deficits

September 4, 2008 Brain imaging links chronic insomnia to reversible cognitive deficits Kelly Wagner, American Academy of Sleep Medicine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MR neuroimaging research has found that cognitive processes relating to verbal fluency are compromised in people with insomnia despite the absence of a behavioral deficit. These specific brain function alterations can be reversed, however, through nonpharmacological treatment with six weeks of sleep therapy. Functional MRI during verbal fluency tasks shows that people with insomnia have less activation than controls in the left medial prefrontal cortex and the left interior frontal gyrus, two fluency-specific brain regions. Participants with insomnia, however, generated more words than controls on both the category fluency task (46.4 words compared with 38.7 words) and the letter fluency task (40.1 words compared with 32.7 words).

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