Effect of stage 1 sleep on auditory cortex during pure tone stimulation: evaluation by functional magnetic resonance imaging with simultaneous EEG monitoring

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Responses of the auditory cortex to sound during sleep have been explored with somewhat discrepant results. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of stage 1 sleep on signal intensity changes in the auditory cortex in response to pure tone stimulus measured by functional MR imaging. METHODS: Six sleep-deprived subjects were exposed to a series of echo-planar images for 30-40 minutes. No medication was used to help the subjects go to sleep. A long repetition time of 12 seconds and a 1.9-second clustered multisection acquisition were used to minimize the effect of imager acoustic noise from the preceding acquisition and to make it possible to obtain electroencephalographs between image acquisitions. A pure tone stimulus (beep, 1,000-Hz sine waves, 30-millisecond duration, five beeps per second) was alternated with the baseline every 36 seconds. RESULTS: All subjects fell asleep. The effect of habituation evaluated by comparing the percentage of signal intensity change between the first and second half was not significant. The percentage of signal intensity changes in the right and left transverse temporal gyri were 0.49% and 0.43% during wakefulness and 0.05% and 0.07% during stage 1 sleep. The differences between wakefulness and stage 1 sleep were significant. CONCLUSION: Transition to stage 1 sleep coincides with a decrease in functional MR imaging-determined signal intensity changes in the auditory cortex in response to pure tone stimulus. The limited response of the brain at this stage may protect the brain from sound and facilitate deepening of the sleep stage.