Investigating Causes and Effects of Insomnia Through Exploratory Analysis

Abstract

Insomnia, a common sleep disorder, radically affects an individual cognitive and neuro- logical health and represents a challenge to personal and professional life. Young adults in urban academic settings of Bangladesh are very much affected by this alarming issue of insomnia which is our objective of this study. Current studies open up an interesting avenue focused on the robust association of insomnia with stress, anxiety, and lifestyle

choices; however, they still lack providing explicit mechanisms that connect these fac- tors with their consequences and brain regions affected. This dichotomy highlights the

need for holistic investigative research that considers both the psychological and brain- based mechanisms of insomnia. To bridge this gap, this paper conducts a systematic

exploratory analysis to map the complex relationships between insomnia causes and ef- fects. By analyzing survey data collected from university students, performing statistical

correlation analyses and clustering techniques, the study unearths significant contributors to insomnia, assesses their impact and outlines the brain regions influenced. It presents a novel insomnia scoring scale, drawing from concepts in established tools (e.g. Insomnia Severity Index (ISI)). Core results show that the symptoms of insomnia are shaped by psychological, environmental, physical and behavioral factors that can serve to influence essential brain functions, particularly in areas such as the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and thalamus. Insomnia constitutes a significant portion of the burden of disease, yet understanding trends from differences in treatment approaches has a limited impact in

clinical settings or intervention research and policy making. As such, it fills in an im- important gap in explanatory research and provides a foundation for targeted intervention and novel therapeutic approaches to help address the pervasive insomnia burden facing This age group. The findings will also contribute to precision treatment approaches and Ultimately, it can also help mitigate insomnia’s broad societal and economic consequences.