The Role of the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus in Cardiac Autonomic Control during Sleep

BACKGROUND: The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) may play an important role in central autonomic control, since its projections connect to (para)sympathetic relay stations in the brainstem and spinal cord. The cardiac autonomic modifications during nighttime may therefore not only result from direct effects of the sleep-related changes in the central autonomic network, but also from endogenous circadian factors as directed by the SCN. To explore the influence of the SCN on autonomic fluctuations during nighttime, we studied heart rate and its variability (HRV) in a clinical model of SCN damage. METHODS: Fifteen patients in follow-up after surgical treatment for nonfunctioning pituitary macroadenoma (NFMA) compressing the optic chiasm (8 females, 26–65 years old) and fifteen age-matched healthy controls (5 females, 30–63 years) underwent overnight ambulatory polysomnography. Eleven patients had hypopituitarism and received adequate replacement therapy. HRV was calculated for each 30-second epoch and corrected for sleep stage, arousals, and gender using mixed effect regression models. RESULTS: Compared to controls, patients spent more time awake after sleep onset and in NREM1-sleep, and less in REM-sleep. Heart rate, low (LF) and high frequency (HF) power components and the LF/HF ratio across sleep stages were not significantly different between groups. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the SCN does not play a dominant role in cardiac autonomic control during sleep.